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HUDSON 

AND 

FULTON 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF HENRY 
HUDSON AND ROBERT FULTON 
WITH SUGGESTIONS DESIGNED 
TO AID THE HOLDING OF GEN- 
ERAL COMMEMORATIVE EXER- 
CISES AND CHILDREN'S FESTI- 
VALS DURING THE HUDSON- 
FULTON CELEBRATION IN 1909 



By EDWARD HAGAMAN HALL, L.H.M., L.H.D. 

;» 



Copyright 1505 

BY 

THE HUDSON-h^ULTON CELEBRATION COMMISSION 
New Yokk 



\ 






ulBKARY of CONGRESS 
Two Gepies Received 

APR 1 1909 

Copyritfii t;itry 
CLASS A. XXc, No, 



(Eontfttta. 

PAGB. 

Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 4 

Introduction g 

The Discovery of the Hudson River ii 

Geographical Knowledge in Hudson's Day ii 

Status of the World Powers in 1609 14 

Henry Hudson the Navigator 19 

Hudson Enters the Employ of the Dutch 22 

Hudson's Famous Voyage of 1609 26 

The Hudson River 32 

The Invention of Steam Navigation 36 

Naval Science Before Fulton's Invention 36 

Robert Fulton from 1765 to 1807 41 

The Voyage of the Clermont 45 

Fulton's Subsequent Career 50 

An Estimate of Fulton's Genius 55 

General Plan of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration 59 

Suggestions for Grneral Commemorative Exercises and 

Children's Festivals 66 

Municipal Authorities and Citizens Generally 66 

Learned and Patriotic Societies 66 

Educational Institutions 66 

Songs 67 

Debates 67 

Essays and Compositions 67 

Tableaux 68 

Exhibitions 70 

Children's Festivals 71 

Books 72 

dlUuatrationa. 

OPPOSITE PAGE. 

Henry Hudson's Last Voyage (Collier) 9 

Map of Hudson's Four Recorded Voyages 24 

The Half Moon 25 

Portrait of Robert Fulton (West) 36 

The Clermont 46 



(§f[xtnB of tl)0 (Eammtfiatan 

mxh AfisiataiitH 



Headquarters: Tribune Building, New York 
Telephones: Beekman, 3097 and 3098 



President 

Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, 18 Wall Street, New York. 

"Vice-Presidents 

Mr. Herman Ridder, Presiding Vice-President and Acting President. 
182 William Street, New York. 

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. John E. Parsons, 

Hon. Joseph H. Choate, Gen. Horace Porter, 
Maj.-Gen. F. D. Grant, U.S.A. Hon. Frederick W. Seward, 

Hon. Seth Low, Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, 

Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Hon. Oscar S. Straus, 

Hon. Levi P. Morton, Mr. Wm. B. Van Rensselaer, 

Hon. Alton B. Parker, Gen. Jas. Grant Wilson. 

Treasurer 

Mr. Isaac N. Seligman, No. i William Street, New York. 

Secretary Assistant Secretary 

Mr. Henry W. Sackett, Mr. Edward Hagaman Hall, 

Tribune Building, New York. Tribune Building, New York. 

Assistants to tKe Secretary 

Mr. George N. Moran, Mr. David T. Wells. 

General Executive Assistant 

Mr. William Parry. 

Captain of Pageantry 

Mr. A. H. Stoddard. 



ll^ulifion-iFulton (ll^lebratwtt (lInmmtsiBt0u 



Revised to March 3, 1909. 



The names of Trustees are set in italics. 

The names of the Mayors of the 4 cities of the State, who are 
members of the Commission and Trustees by virtue of their office, 
are designated thus (*). 

The names of the Presidents of 38 incorporated villages along 
the Hudson river who are members of the Commisson by virtue of 
their office are designated thus (t). 



Abraham Abraham. 

*Hon. fames N. Adam. 

Edward D. Adams. 

Herbert Adams. 

William P. Adams. 

WilUam A. Adriance. 

Hon. Jolin G. A^ar. 

Richard B. Aldcroftt, Jr. 

Alphonse H. Alker. 

B. Altman. 

Louis Annin Ames. 

Hon. Arthur L. Andrews. 

Hon. John E. Andrus. 

Hon. James K. Apgar. 

Charles H. Armatage. 

Col. John Jacob Astor. 

Mrs. Anson P. Atterbury. 

Frank N. Bain. 

Geo. Wm. Ballou. 

Hon. Theodore M. Banta. 

*Hon John C. Barry, 

Col. Franklin Bartlett. 

Dr. George C. Batcheller. 

Constr. Wm. J. Baxter, U. S. 

Dr. James C. Bayles. 

Hon. James M. Beck. 

*Hon. F. Beebe. 

August Belmont. 

tHon. M. S. Beltzhoover. 

Dr. Marcus Benjamin. 

t Hon. Frank E. Bennett. 

Tunis G. Bergen. 

Hon. William Berri. 

Hon. John Bigelow. 

Hon. Frank S. Black. 

Hon. E. W. Bloomingdale. 

Henry L. Bogert. 

G. Louis Boissevain. 

George C. Boldt. 

Reginald Pelham Bolton. 

Hon. David A. Boody. 

Hon. A. J. Boulton. 

tHon. Horace W. Boyd. 

Hon. Thomas W. Bradley. 

Com. Herbert L. Bridgman. 



George V. Brower. 
Dr. E. Parmly Brown. 
Hon. M. Linn Bruce. 
Edward P. Bryan. 
William L. Bull. 
tHon. D. A. Bullard. 
Cornelius F. Burns. 
tHon. Clifford Bush. 
Henry K. Bush-Brown. 
Hon. E. H. Butler. 
Hon. J. Rider Cady. 
John F. Calder. 
Hon. J. H. Callanan. 
Henry W. Cannon. 
Herbert Carl. 
*Hon. Samuel A. Carlson. 
Andrezv Carnegie. 
Gen. Hozvard Carroll. 
John J. Cavanagh. 
Hon. Joseph H. Choate. 
John Claflin. 

Sir Caspar Ptirdon Clarke. 
vHon. J. H. Clarkson. 
N. Hon. George C. Clausen. 
Hon. A. T. Clearwater. 
Frederick J. Collier. 
E. C. Converse. 
Walter Cook 
*//o;j. Charles W. Cool. 
Charles F. Cossum. 
Hon. John H. Coyne. 
*Hon. W. P. Crane. 
Paul D. Cravath. 
John B. Creighton, 
Hon. John D. Crimmins. 
Frederick R. Cruikshank. 
E. D. Cummings. 
William J. Curtis. 
Robert Fulton Cutting. 
Frederick B. Dalzell. 
*Hon. Jacob H. Dealy. 
Hon. Robert W. De Forest. 
Flon. Charles de Kay. 
James de la Montanye. 
Elias S. A. de Lima. 



List of Members 



Hon. Chauncey M. Depew. 
Edward DeWitt. 
George G. DeWitt. 
Cleveland H. Dodge. 
Henry H. Doremus. 
* Hon. Edward W. Douglas. 
Dr. James Douglas. 
*Hon. Anthony C. Douglass. 
tHon. James H. Doyle. 
Hon. Andrew S. Draper. 
Hon. William Draper. 
Hon. John F. Dryden. 
Capt. Charles A. DuBois. 
John C. Eamcs. 
*Hon. Hiram H. Edgertoii. 
George Ehret. 
*Hon. Meyer Einstein. 
Hon. Charles A. Elliott. 
Hon. Philip Elting. 
Matthew C. Ely. 
Robert Erskine Ely, 
Hon. Smith Ely. 
Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet. 
Hon. Arthur English. 
Most. Rev. John M. Farley. 
Hon. J. Sloat Fassett. 
Barr Ferree. 
Morris P. Ferris. 
Hon. Hamilton Fish. 
Stuyvesant Fish. 
*Hon. Louis T. Fisk. 
Theodore Fitch. 
Winchester Fitch. 
tHon. James F. FitzGerald. 
Hon. James J. Fitzgerald. 
Frederick S. Flower. 
tHon. John T. Flynn. 
*Hon. Alan C. Fobes. 
*Hon. Wm. Follette. 
Thomas Pozvell Fowler. 
Austen G. Fox. 
Hon. Charles S. Francis. 
Commander W. B. Franklin. 
tHon. James L. Freeborn. 
tHon. Lyman C. French. 
Henry C. Frick. 
*Hon. C. A. Frost. 
Lieut. -Com. A. B. Fry. 
Henry Fuehrer. 
Frank S. Gardner. 
Hon. Garret J. Garretson. 
Hon. Charles H. Gaus. 
"Hon. Theodore P. Gilman. 
Robert Walton Goelet. 
Dr. Elgin R. L. Gould. 
George J. Gould. 
Maj. Gen. F. D. Grant, U. S. A. 



Capt. Richard H. Greene. 
George F. Gregory. 
Henry E. Gregory. 
Hon. John W. Griggs. 
tHon. John Gross. 
Hon. Edward M. Grout. 
Abner S. Haight. 
Edivard Hagaman Hall. 
Benjamin F. Hamilton. 
*Ho)i. M. D. Hanson. 
Robert J. Harding. 
Edward H. Harriman. 
W. R. Harrison. 
Hon. G. D. B. Hasbrouck. 

* Hon. Eugene J. Haiiratio. 
Arthur H. Hearn. 
George A. Hearn. 

Chas. E. Heitman. 
Theodore Henninger. 
Peter Cooper Hewitt. 
tHon. C. W. Higley. 
Hon. IVarren Higley. 
Hon. David B. Hill. 
James J. Hill, 
rhos. J. Hillery. 
Hon. Michael H. Hirschberg. 
Samuel Verplanck Hoffman. 
James P. Holland. 
Willis Holly. 
William Homan. 

* Hon. Randolph Horton. 
*Hon. Benjamin Howe. 
Hon. Henry E. Howland. 
Colgate Hoyt. 

Dr. LeRoy W. Hubbard. 
Grit. Thomas H. Hubbard. 
Hon. Henry Hudson. 
Walter G. Hudson. 
tHon. John L. Hughes. 
*Hon. Francis M. Hugo. 
William T. Hunt. 
Archer M. Huntington. 
T. D. Huntting. 
Walter L. Hutchins. 
August F. Jaccaci. 
Col. William Jay. 
tHon. Roswell S. Judson. 
tHon. Irving J. Justus. 
Jacol) Katz. 
James Kemey. 
*Hou. Albert Kessinger. 
Gen. Horatio C. King. 
David M. Kinnear. 
Albert E. Kleinert. 
*Hon. C. August Koenig. 
Hon. Henry Kohl. 
Dr. George F. Runs. 



List of Members 



John Latarge. 
Charles R. Lamb. 
Frederick S. Lamb. 
*Hon. Robert Lawrence. 
Homer Lee. 
Charles W. Lefler. 
Dr. Henry M. Leipziger. 
Clarence E. Leonard. 
Hon. Clarence Lexow. 
Hon. Gustav Lindenthal. 
Herman Livingston. 
Hon. Phineas C. Lounsbury. 
Hon. Seth Low. 
R. Fulton Ludlow. 
tHon. Thomas Lynch. 
Col. Arthur MacArthur. 
R. J. MacFarland. 
tHon. Joel D. Madden. 
*Hon. IV. H. Mandeville. 
*Hon. Elias P. Mann. 
William A. Marble. 
George E. Matthews. 
Hon. IVilliam McCarroll. 
*Hon. George B. McClellan. 
*Hon. Benjamin McClung. 
Gen. Anson G. McCook. 
Col. John J. McCook. 
Donald McDonald. 
tHon. Charles McElroy. 
Hon. Patrick F, McGowan. 
IVilliam J. McKay. 
John J. McKelvey. 
Hon. St. Clair McKelway. 
tHon. John McLindon. 
*Hon. Thomas A. McNamara. 
Rear Admiral George IV. Mel- 
ville, U. S. N. 
Hon. John G. Milburn. 
Hon. Frank V. Millard. 
Capt. Jacob W. Miller. 
Hon. Warner Miller. 
Frank D. Millet. 
Brig. Gen. A. L. Mills, U. S. A. 
Ogden Mills. 

*Hon. George" H. Minard. 
*Hon. IV. B. Mooers. 
J. Pierpont Morgan. 
Hon. Fordham Morris. 
Hoti. Levi P. Morton. 
tHon. Dennis Moynihan. 
Hon. Franklin Murphy. 
tHon. Vincent A. Murray. 
William C. Muschenheim. 
tHon. W. H. Myers. 
Nathan Newman. 
Charles H. Niehaus. 
Ludwig Nissen. 



Hon. Lewis Nixon. 

Charles R. Norman. 

Hon. Morgan J. O'Brien. 

Hon. Benjamin B. Odell, Jr. 

William R. O'Donovan. 

Eben E. Olcott. 

Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn. 

William Church Osborn. 

Percy B. O'Sullivan. 

Hon. Alton B. Parker. 

Orrel A. Parker. 

John E. Parsons. 

Hon. Samuel Parsons. 

Samuel H. Parsons. 

Dr. Edward L. Partridge. 

Commander R. E. Peary, U. S. N. 

Bayard L. Peck. 

Gordon H. Peck. 

Hon. George W. Perkins. 

Hon. N. Taylor Phillips. 

Hon. Samuel K. Phillips. 

George A. Plimpton. 

Dr. Eugene H. Porter. 

Gen. Horace Porter. 

tHon. Clarence E. Powell. 

*Hon. Richard M. Prangen. 

Hon. John D. Prince. 

Hon. Thomas R. Proctor. 

Hon. Cornelius A. Pugsley. 

tHon. A. F. Quick. 

*Hon. Edivard Quirk. 

Louis C. Raegener. 

John H. Ramsay. 

*Hon. George G. Raymond. 

Herman Ridder. 

Edward Robinson. 

William Rockefeller. 

''Hon. W. J. Rockefeller. 

Ma;. Gen. Charles F. Roe 

Carl J. Roehr. 

Louis T. Romaine. 

*Hon. Arthur P. Rose. 

tHon. A. Rowe. 

Thomas F. Ryan. 

Col. Henry W. Sackett. 

*Hon. John K. Sague. 

Col. William Gary Sanger. 

*Hon. A. B. Santry. 

George Henry Sargent. 

Col. Herbert L. Salter lee. 

John Scanlon. 

Charles A. Schermerhorn. 

Hon. Charles A. Schieren. 

Jacob H. Schiff. 

Dr. Gustav Scholer. 

Pres. Jacob Gould Schurman. 

Gustaz> H. Schzvab. 



List of Members 



Hon. Townsend Scudder. 
Wallace M. Scudder. 
Oscar R. Seitz. 
Isaac N. Seligman. 
Louis Seligsberg. 
Hon. Frederick W. Seward. 
*Hon. Daniel Sheehan. 
Hon. William F. Sheehan. 
Hon. Edward M. Shepard. 
Hon. Theodore H. Silkman. 
/. Edward Simmons. 
John W. Simpson. 
John J. Sinclair. 
*Hon. C. M. Slausen. 
Hon. Henry Smith. 
tHon. Isaac H. Smith. 
*Hon. John K. Smith. 
Prof. John C. Smock. 
*Hon. Henry F. Snyder. 
William Sohmer. 
Nelson S. Spencer. 
James Speyer. 
Hon. George V. L. Spratt. 
Hon. John H. Starin. 
Isaac Stern. 
Hon. Louis Stern. 
Francis Lynde Stetson. 
Louis Stewart. 
James Stillman. 
Henry L. Stoddard. 

Hon. Edward C. Stokes. 
Hon. Oscar S. Straus. 
tHon. F. Herbert Sutherland. 
George R. Sutherland. 
Hon. Leslie Sutherland. 

Hon. Theodore Sutro. 
* Hon. H. B. Swartwout. 
George W. Sweeney. 

Stevenson Taylor. 

Col. Robert M. Thompson. 

tHon. Fred. W. Titus. 

Henry R. Towne. 

Irving Townsend, M. D. 

Spencer Trask. 

Peter H. Troy. 

tHon. Arthur C. Tucker. 

C. Y. Turner. 

Albert Ulmann. 

Lieut. Com. Aaron Vanderbilt. 



Alfred G. Vanderbilt. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

Rev. Henry Van Dyke, D. D. 

Warner Van Norden. 

IVilliam B. Van Rensselaer. 

*Hon. Horace S. Van Voast. 

John R. Van Wormer. 

J. Leonard Varick. 

William G. Ver Planck. 

Hon. Foster M. Voorhees. 

tHon. C. E. Vredenburg. 

Hon. E. B. Vreeland. 

Col. John W. Vrooman. 

Hon. Charles G. F. Wahle. 

Capt. Aaron Ward, U. S. N. 

Dr. Samuel B. Ward. 

Hon. W. L. Ward. 

*Hon. Nathan A. Warren. 

tHon. Robert B. Waters. 

tHon. Anthony J. Weaver. 

tHon. E. L. Wemple. 

Hon. George T. Werts. 

Charles W. Wetmore. 

Edmund Wetmore. 

Henry W. Wetmore. 

*Hon. Thomas Wheeler. 

Hon. J. DuPratt White. 

Fred. C. Whitney. 

Gen. W. C S. Wiley. 

Hon. William R. Willcox. 

Charles R Wilson. 

Edward C. Wilson. 

Frederick W. Wilson. 

Gen. Jas. Grant Wilson. 

tHon. John Wirth. 

Hon. John S. Wise. 

Hon. H. Otto Wittpenn. 

Charles B. Wolffram. 

tHon. Edward J. Wood. 

J. S. Wood. 

Maf. Gen. Leonard Wood, U. S. A. 

Gen. Stezvart L. Woodford. 

Hon. Timothy L. Woodruff. 

W. E. Woolley. 

William* Wortman. 

James A. Wright. 

*Hon. Frederick M. Young. 

Hon. Richard Young. 

tHon. F. G. Zinsser. 



FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT COUNCILLORS 

Dr A Bredius The Hague, The Netherlands. 

Hon C. G. Hooft Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 

Hon D. Hudig Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 

Dr. W. Martin The Hague. The Netherlands. 

Dr. E. W. Moes Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 




Last Voyage of Henry Hubson 

From painting by Hon. John CoHier in the National Gallery of British Art 
(or Tate Ganery) London. EnR., representing Hudson and companions 
abandoned by his mutinous crew in Hudson Bay, June 22, 161 1 



INTRODUCTION 



From September 25 to October 9, 1909, the State of New 
York, under the auspices of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration 
Commission, will commemorate with appropriate exercises 
the 300th anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River 
by Henry Hudson in 1609, ^"d the looth anniversary of the 
successful inauguration of steam navigation upon the same 
river by Robert Fulton in 1807. 

While, on account of the nature of the events commemo- 
rated and the necessity for a certain amount of concentra- 
tion in order to make the commemoration effective, a large 
part of the celebration will take place along the Hudson 
Valley, yet the people of the whole State cannot fail to take 
a lively interest in it. The discovery of the Hudson river 
and the successful application of steam to navigation were 
local events only in a narrow sense of the term. In effect 
they were of state-wide, national, and even international 
significance. One brought to the knowledge of Europe and 
opened up to civilization the great river to which, more than 
any other single natural factor, is due the greatness of New 
York as the Empire State and New York City as the Me- 
tropolis of the New World. The other has given to all the 
navigable waters of the earth a value which they did not 
previously possess, has reduced the ocean's waste, in point 
of time, to one-sixth its former dreary breadth, and has pro- 
moted the neighborliness of nations to a degree which can- 
not readily be estimated. These events have contributed 
greatly to the advancement of civilization, and it is a just 
cause for State pride that they occurred within our borders. 

Not the least of the beneficent effects of the order of 
nature which causes time to move in cycles, is the powerful 
influence of the association of ideas which accompanies an- 
niversaries. H the universe were stationery, and we had no 
alternation of light and darkness and seed time and har- 
vest, we should lose not only the physical benefits which 



lo Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

come from those alternations, but we should also lose the 
means by which to measure time; we should have no anni- 
versaries; and we should lack a strong help to human ad- 
vancement. Civilization progresses partly by memory of, 
comparison with and improvement upon, past events. And 
anniversaries, eloquent with memories, come to us like min- 
istering spirits of the past to remind, to teach, to admonish 
and to inspire the present. Thus they recompense us some- 
what for the slipping by of the years. 

So come these two cardinal anniversaries in the history 
of our great State; and it is proper that our people should 
pause in their customary occupations and take time for the 
contemplation of the thoughts which the anniversaries stimu- 
late. This is particularly true of the Universities, Colleges, 
Public Schools, and Learned Societies throughout the State. 
In the programme as prepared by the Hudson-Fulton Cele- 
bration Commission, one day, Wednesday, September 29, 
called General Commemoration Day, has been designed es- 
pecially for appropriate indoor observances in such institu- 
tions. The Chairman of the Committee on General Com- 
memorative Exercises is President Jacob Gould Schurman 
of Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. In a similar way, Sat- 
urday, October 2, called Carnival Day, has been designated 
as the appropriate day for Children's Festivals out-of-doors. 
The chairman of the Children's Festival Committee is 
Hon. Samuel Parsons, Landscape Architect of the Parks 
of New York city, 1133 Broadway, New York. 

The authorities, students and members of all educational 
institutions and learned societies, as well as the children of 
the State of New York, are earnestly invoked to make due 
observance of the Hudson-Fulton anniversaries, either upon 
the days named or upon such other day or days during the 
two weeks' celebration as may be most convenient. 

With a view to helping such observances, the following 

pages have been prepared. 

Herman Ridder, 

Acting President. 
Henry W. Sackett, 

Secretary. 



1 1 
PART I. 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER. 

Geographical Knowledge in Hudson's Day. 



Between September 2 and October 4, 1609, Henry Hud- 
son, an English navigator sailing under Dutch auspices, ex- 
plored the river which bears his name in what is now called 
the State of New York. 

To realize the importance of that voyage, it is necessary 
to recall the incomplete state of geographical knowledge of 
America 300 years ago, and the extremely slight hold which 
European civilization had upon this continent at that time. 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, European 
acquaintance with North and South America, with excep- 
tions to be noted hereafter, was confined almost exclusively 
to the sea shore. Between the advent of the Norsemen upon 
the New England coast in the year 1000 or earlier, and Sir 
Francis Drake's voyage to the Pacific in 1579, navigators 
of various nationalities had in a general way followed the 
continental borders from Baffinland down along Labrador, 
Nova Scotia, the Eastern United States, the countries bor- 
dering the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean sea and the east- 
ern coast of South America, passed through the Straits of 
Magellan, and gone up the western side of South America 
and North America as far as Oregon. But while that was 
true, European knowledge of the Americas was extremely 
rudimentary for several reasons : 

First, in most of these voyages the coast was touched 
only at intervals and known only in its most prominent 
features. Details had been examined very little. 

In the next place, precise observations of latitude and 
longitude and precise surveys, which are the basis of accu- 
rate map-making, were impossible at that time on account 
of the crude instruments used in navigation and the corre- 
spondingly undeveloped state of marine science. 

In the third place, it was an age when, on account of na- 
tional rivalries, explorers did not freely disclose their dis- 



12 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

coveries to the world at large, so that there was difficulty in 
collating, comparing and correcting the observations of dif- 
ferent navigators. 

For these reasons, the maps of the coasts of the New 
World prior to Hudson's time were incomplete, incorrect, 
and absurdly distorted. 

Within these curiously disproportioned continental out- 
lines, the country was almost unknown. The Saint Law- 
rence river had been penetrated as far as Montreal and 
Quebec settled in 1608. At Port Royal, Nova Scotia, the 
French had planned a settlement but it was abandoned in 
1607. One or two of the larger rivers of Maine had been 
entered for a short distance and an English settlement had 
been made at Pemaquid but it was abandoned in 1608. The 
Hudson river had been entered but there was no general 
knowledge concerning it. The James river, in Virginia, 
had been explored as far as the falls at Richmond, 
and the first permanent English-speaking settlement in 
America had been made at Jamestown, Virginia, in 
1607. In 1608 Captain John Smith explored the 
Chesapeake Bay, but the really remarkable map which 
was drawn from his explorations was not published 
until 1612. From Virginia southward another dreary 
stretch of uncivilized coast reached to Florida. There 
the St. John's river had been entered and a colony at- 
tempted by the French, but the colony had been wiped out 
by the Spaniards, who founded St. Augustine in 1564. 
Ponce de Leon who landed in Florida and De Soto who dis- 
covered the Lower Mississippi, contributed little to accu- 
rate geographical knowledge. Information about the inter- 
ior of the Americas was confined almost entirely to Mexico 
and Peru, from which the Spaniards had extracted, under 
a system of slavery worse than Egyptian, the gold and sil- 
ver which had made them in the i6th century the most 
powerful civilized nation in the world. From Mexico as a 
base, the Spaniards had explored the southwestern United 
States as far north as Kansas and had made some interest- 
ing discoveries, such as those of the Grand Canyon of tlic 
Coloiado river, the Pueblos of the southwestern Indians, 



D/scovery of the Hudson River 13 

etc., but they had planted within the present Hmits of the 
United States only one settlement, other than St. Augusthie 
before mentioned, namely, Santa Fe, N. M. 

That, in brief, was what the Old World knew geographi- 
cally about the New. It will thus be seen how little was 
known in Hudson's day about North America north of 
Mexico; and with only four permanent settlements north 
of the Rio Grande, namely at Quebec, Jamestown, St. 
Augustine and Santa Fe,* there were few bases on the 
continent from which further explorations could be made. 
Dependence, therefore, was still placed on European navi- 
gators for additional information. Under such conditions, 
it is apparent that the thorough exploration of a great river 
like the Hudson, and the revelation of its commercial pos- 
sibilities to what was then the most enterprising commercial 
people of Europe, was a very valuable addition to the Old 
World's knowledge of the New. 

In order that there may be no misconception as to the 
nature of the honor accorded to Hudson, it should be said 
in passing that it is not claimed that he was the first to 
learn of the existence of the river which bears his name. 
The word " discover " does not necessarily mean to see a 
thing first. Its primary meaning is to uncover or to lay 
open to view ; hence, to show, to exhibit, or to make known. 
Columbus was not the first person to discover America, for 
the Norsemen had discovered this continent five hundred 
years before Columbus' famous voyage; and yet we justly 
call Columbus the discoverer because he made his knowledge 
useful to mankind. 

So it was with Hudson. The sharp re-entrant angle 
in the Atlantic coast which marks the outlet of the Hudson 
river had not escaped the notice of earlier navigators, and 
the bend in the shore line and the river itself were clearly 
delineated on maps made before Hudson's day. We even 
know the names of some of his predecessors in New York 
harbor. The earliest European visitor to these waters of 
whom we have indisputable proof was Verazzano, who came 

* At Quebec there were only eight survivors in 1609. At James- 
town there were about 200. 



14 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

in 1524. He referred to the upper harbor as a beautiful 
lake and to the river as " una grandissima riviera " — a very 
large river. He was followed in 1525 by Gomez, who 
named the river after St. Anthony. Thus, without taking 
into consideration the less easily demonstrated but not im- 
probable claims that French, Spanish and even Dutch traders 
had resorted to the river between 1525 and 1609, it is ap- 
parent that so far as the undisputed records are concerned, 
Verazzano had found the stream and Gomez had named 
it eighty-five and eighty-four years respectively before Hud- 
son sailed from Amsterdam. 

But notwithstanding all this, it remains that Hudson 
was first to give to the world an authentic record of care- 
ful exploration of the river to the head of navigation and 
in the true sense of the word to " discover " to mankind 
the extent and resources of this great stream. The asso- 
ciation of his name with the river is perhaps one of the 
strongest evidences of the common consent with which he 
was recognized in the 17th century as the navigator to 
whom the nations were chiefly indebted for their knowl- 
edge of the stream. We are well justified, therefore, in 
calling Hudson the discoverer of the river and in according 
him honor as such. 

Status of the World Pozucrs in 1609 
In order to understand the conditions under which Hud- 
son made his voyage in 1609, it is necessary to glance at 
the status of the world powers which at that time was very 
different from their status to-day. 

The three leading factors in the political and commercial 
world in 1609, so far as the discovery of the Hudson was 
concerned, were Spain, England, and the Netherlands. Port- 
ugal had made important discoveries in the past and had a 
valuable commerce, but in 1609 she was an appendage of 
Spain and can be disregarded. France had for years been 
engaged in complicated political intrigues, trying to play 
off Spain, England and The Netherlands against each other 
for her own advantage, and, with an exception to be noted 
hereafter, she also can be disregarded in this connection. 



Discovery of the Hudson River 15 

Spain had but lately passed the zenith of her greatness. 
For a long time prior to 1588 she had been the greatest 
political, military and naval power on the face of the earth, 
her possessions in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia 
constituting the first empire upon which it could truly be 
?aid the sun never set. It is almost impossible to-day to rea- 
lize the tremendous strength of Spain in the i6th century 
and even well into the 17th. 

For forty years, prior to 1609, every resource which 
Spain's wealth and influence could command had been em- 
ployed in an effort to crush and subjugate the Nether- 
landers, but without success, and in 1609 ^ twelve years' 
truce had been agreed upon. Thus, while there was nomin- 
ally peace between the two countries, there was an intense 
hatred on the part of the Netherlanders for their hereditary 
enemies, which was one of the stimulating causes for Hud- 
son's voyage, as we shall see later. 

Spain had also recently been at war with England, so 
that the English and Dutch peoples had much to draw 
them together in common sympathy against the Spaniards. 
In 1588, Spain had started out with her so-called Invinci- 
ble Armada to invade England, but the English, (aided by 
the Dutch who detained Spanish forces in The Netherlands) 
destroyed the Spanish fleet and thus effectually broke the 
Spanish sea-power. English merchants, and the English 
government to a smaller extent, had reciprocated the help 
of the Netherlanders by sending them money to aid them 
in their war with Spain, so that although, in 1609, Spain 
and England were apparently on friendly terms, there was 
no love lost between them. 

England, Hudson's native country, had just passed 
through one of the most glorious periods of her history. 
During Queen Elizabeth's reign, the English sea-kings had 
won those great naval victories which laid the foundation 
of England's maritime greatness; manufacture and com- 
merce had been stimulated; exploration had been encour- 
aged; genius had been inspired; and Shakespeare and 
Spenser had shone in the literary world. The spirit of dis- 



i6 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

covery and commercial enterprise aroused in Elizabeth's 
reign did not abate in 1603 when James I ascended the 
throne, and had an important influence on Hudson's career. 
In 1566, Parliament had incorporated " The Fellowship of 
English Merchants for the Discovery of New Trades," 
called for the sake of brevity the Muscovy Company, or 
Russia Company. Their trade was primarily with Russia. 
Christopher Hudson — possibly a relative of Henry Hud- 
son — was one of the promoters of the Company. The 
formation of the Muscovy Company was followed by the 
organization of other similar corporations — the Turkey 
Company in 1581, the Morocco Company in 1585, the 
Guinea Company in 1588, and others. But the great com- 
mercial prize for which the nations were contending was 
the rich trade with the East Indies, and in 1600, the English 
East India Company was formed for oriental commerce. 

In every direction in which the English carried their sea 
traffic they encountered the keenest competition from the 
Dutch, for however friendly the two peoples were politi- 
cally, they were jealous rivals commercially. So greatly 
did the Dutch encroach upon the English trade with Russia 
in particular, that just prior to Hudson's voyage in 1609, 
we find the English Muscovy Company and the English 
East India Company co-operating in an effort to find a 
passage to the treasures of the orient either around the 
north of Europe and Asia or around or through North 
America. It is here that we have the keynote to all four 
of Hudson's voyages. 

Hudson's first recorded voyage was contemporaneous 
with two other important English events affecting Ameri- 
can history. One was the planting of the first permanent 
English-speaking colony in the New World as Jamestown 
in 1607; the other was the flight of the Puritans from Eng- 
land to Holland. Both were related to the history of the 
Hudson river, for Captain John Smith sent from Virginia 
to Henry Hudson certain information which led Hudson 
to explore the Hudson river; and the other led eventuall) 
to the emigration from Holland of the Pilgrims, who 



Discovery of the Hudson River 17 

started for the Hudson river but actually landed at Ply- 
mouth, (See footnote on page 35,) 

Turning now to the people under whose auspices the 
Hudson river was explored and New York was first 
settled : The Netherlands had been at war with Spain 
for forty years, and in 1609 had paused to catch breath 
in preparation for forty years more of struggle. The 
resistance of The Netherlands to the domination of Spain 
constitutes one of the most extraordinary and thrilling chap- 
ters in human history. The Dutch were lovers of law and 
liberty, and their war for independence was wonderfully 
like our own. Philip H had deprived them of the popular 
suffrage which they had enjoyed by ancient charters ; he 
forced foreign governors upon them ; he quartered Spanish 
soldiers among them ; he slew thousands of them on account 
of their religion. Then there rose up among them a great 
man, like our Washington of later times, William the 
Silent, who sold all his valuables and consecrated himself 
to the cause of the people. Under his heroic leadership the 
little Netherlands revolted against powerful Spain in 1568 
just as the American colonies revolted against England in 
1775; in 1581 they adopted a Declaration of Independence 
which was a model for our Declaration of Independence 
in 1776; and they fought against tremendous odds until 
they established a Republic, just as the Americans did 
many years afterwards. The heroism of the Dutch people, 
whether fighting in boats on the sea, or on skates on the 
ice, or behind their walls on land, has never been sur- 
passed. In the sieges of Harlem and Leiden and other cities, 
men and women stood shoulder to shoulder for Dutch 
liberties. In these terrible sieges, they had to contend not 
only with Spaniards but also with pestilence and starvation. 
After consuming their ordinary food they lived on dogs, 
cats and mice rather than surrender. Then they boiled old 
saddles, and the hides of oxen and horses. Then they de- 
voured their boots and shoes ; and then they ate the grass 
that grew between the stones of their streets. At Leiden, 
the Dutch cut the dikes and let in the ocean and the Span- 



i8 Brief History of ^ Hudson and Fulton 

iards fled lest they be swallowed up like Pharaoh and his 
army in the Red Sea. 

In 1609, at the beginning of the twelve years' truce, the 
Dutch Republic was as populous as England and more 
wealthy. It was the manufacturing and commercial center 
of Europe; and Amsterdam, from which Hudson sailed, 
was the leading port of the world. 

The people of The Netherlands were not only indus- 
trious, but with their universities and schools they were 
learned and cultured. They loved education. When, after 
the siege of Leiden, William of Orange offered the people 
of the city, as a reward for their heroism, the choice be- 
tween the gift of a university and a remission of taxes, 
they chose the university, and thus came into exist- 
ence the University of Leiden, which has given so many 
great men to the world. The Dutch people were, and still 
are, artistic and inventive. Their art galleries rival any 
in Europe. They dispute with Germany the honor of first 
printing from movable type. They gave the telescope, the 
microscope, the pendulum clock and many other great in- 
ventions to the world. They have aptly been called the 
" Yankees of Europe." Above all, they believed in liberty 
of conscience and religious toleration, and gave refuge to 
the oppressed of all Europe. Such was the character of 
the people who founded New Netherland, a part of which 
is now New York State, and although the Old Dutch gov- 
ernment and the Old Dutch name have passed away, the 
influence of the Dutch character and institutions has been 
indelible. 

As before stated, the Dutch were powerful competitors 
with England in water-borne commerce, and they had a 
stimulus to this which the English had not. The prolonged 
war with Spain had cost the Netherlanders a prodigious ex- 
penditure of treasure as well as of blood, and they realized 
that they could not maintain a successful struggle against 
their powerful antagonist unless they could replenish their 
purses. In the East Indies they saw a prize the winning of 
which would accomplish a two-fold result, namely, it would 



Discovery of the Hudson River 19 

increase their power to continue the fight with Spain indefi- 
nitely, while at the same time it would proportionately de- 
crease the resources of the Spaniards. This led to the 
formation, in 1602, of the powerful Dutch East India Com- 
pany, one of the most extraordinary corporate monopolies 
in the history of that period ; and this, in turn, led to the 
founding- of the Dutch empire in the East. It was under 
the auspices of this Company, formed primarily for the East 
India trade, that Hudson started on his voyage in 1609 
under the circumstances to be narrated hereafter. 

Henry Hudson the Navigator 
It was in the midst of this commercial competition be- 
tween Englan<l and The Netherlands, and while both peoples 
were dreaming of a northeast or northwest passage to the 
Indies, that Henry Hudson enters upon the stage of authen- 
tic history. 

All that we know of Hudson is comprised within and 
between the years 1607 and 161 1. He was a citizen of Lon- 
don and was probably born in that city or immediate vicin- 
ity, but we do not know the exact place and date of his birth, 
nor do we know the exact place and date of his death. He 
first appears, on April 19, 1607, with eleven sea-faring com- 
panions, in the little church of Saint Ethleburga, in Lon- 
don, partaking of Holy Communion prior to embarkation 
on his first recorded voyage. He disappears from view 
in the mists of the great Hudson Bay on June 22, 161 1, set 
adrift with a few comrades by a mutinous crew to face the 
terrors of an unknown fate. We do not even know how he 
looked, for there is no authentic portrait of him, but fortu- 
nately we know his character by his works. 

It is not to be imagined, however, that Hudson became 
the skillful and daring navigator that he was without hard 
schooling at sea, and we can give a fairly safe conjecture 
as to how he received his nautical training. Men of the 
name of Hudson were prominent and influential at that 
time and intimately identified with the Muscovy Company 
and the study of navigation. A Christopher Hudson of 



20 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

London, who was living at least as late as 1601 and was 
llierefore contemporary with Henry Hudson, was a founder 
of the Muscovy Company under whose auspices Henry 
Hudson made his first voyage. In 1580 and 1581, there was 
in the employ of the Muscovy Company a Capt. Thomas 
Hudson who was a bold and skillful seaman. About the 
years 1581 and 1583 there was in London a Thomas Hud- 
son — probably another Thomas — holding frequent con- 
ferences on marine affairs with such famous navigators as 
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Capt. John 
Davis, and with Richard Hakluyt, the great chronicler. Just 
what relation these and various other Hudsons of the time 
bore to our Henry Hudson we do not know, but we have 
here enough to show that the men of the name of Hudson 
were intimately connected with navigation, and to suggest 
that probably Henry Hudson had had extensive training in 
the service of the English Muscovy Company before it en- 
trusted cne of its valuable ships to his command. The 
nearest ancestor who can be claimed for Henry Hudson 
with any strong probability of accuracy is an alderman of 
London named Henry Hudson who is thought to have been 
the navigator's grandfather. 

That Llenry Hudson had a wife and children we learn 
from his contract with the Dutch East India Company in 
1609, and that one of his children was a young son appears 
probable from the fact that he had with him on his first, 
second, and fourth voyages a boy named John Hudson. 

It is evident that Hudson belonged to a prominent family, 
stood high in the esteem of the Muscovy Company and had 
some standing at Court, for on his last voyage he promised 
to have one Llenry Green made a member of the Prince of 
Wales Guard, and, in 1612, vessels were sent out in search 
of him by the Prince of Wales' orders. 

Hudson made four voyages of which we have records. 
The first, second and fourth were under English auspices, 
and the third under Dutch. (See accompanying map.) 

The first was made from April 23 to September 15, 1607, 
in the employment of the English Muscovy Company in an 




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Discovery of the Hudson River 21 

effort to reach China hy passing between Greenland an<l 
Spitzbergen and across the polar region. His ship was 
named the "Hopewell." He reached a height of 81° 30', 
a point nearer the pole than any other navigator up to that 
time, but baffled by the artic ice, he returned to the Thames 
about four and a half months after he started. 

In 1608, from April 22 to August 26, he made another 
voyage under the same auspices, probably in the same ship, 
and with the same object. At first he tried to pass between 
Spitzbergen and Nova Zcmbla and reached a height of 75° 
30', but was defeated by the ice. Then he returned south- 
ward and tried to find a way through the Nova Zembla 
group but failed. Thereupon he returned to England. On 
this trip, on June 15, Hudson recorded that two of his crew 
saw a real mermaid, half woman and half fish. 

In 1609, Hudson entered the service of the Dutch East 
India Company and made his third historic voyage on the 
Half Moon. 

On April 17, 1610, Hudson started on his last voyage, 
having been fitted out by a new English company formed 
under the auspices of the Muscovy Company, the English 
East India Company, and a number of patrons among the 
nobility. His ship was named the Discoverer. His object 
was to search for a northwest route to the Pacific Ocean 
through what is now called Hudson's Strait. In the follow- 
ing August he entered Hudson's Bay, spent the remainder 
of the season exploring it, and wintered there. During the 
winter Hudson's crew became violently disaffected with 
Hieir master. They found fault with their limited allowance 
of provisions; they found fault with the strong discipline 
which he tried to enforce, and they found fault with his 
plans to continue his search for a westward passage when 
spring came. At length, on June 22, 161 1, when in the east- 
ern part of Hudson Bay, south of Cape Wolstenholme, the 
crew broke out in open mutiny. By force they put Henry 
Hudson, John Hudson, and seven others, mostly sick and 
disabled, into the shallop. In the boat were also a gun, 
some powder and shot, an iron pot, some meal, a chest of 



22 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

carpenter tools and a few other things. The mutineers 
then cut the shallop adrift and sailed away as fast as they 
could, leaving Hudson and his comrades in the terrible plight 
so powerfully depicted in Collier's famous painting entitled 
" Hudson's Last Voyage." Whither the great navigator 
and his companions went and what became of them — 
whether they died of starvation, or were crushed in the ice, 
or were drowned, or frozen to death, or reached land and 
perished from the fury of the natives — no one knows. The 
mutineers — such as escaped starvation and the attacks of 
the Esquimaux — reached Ireland September 6, 1611. Re- 
turning to England they were at first imprisoned ; but later 
they appear to have been released without further punish- 
ment. 

All four of Hudson's recorded voyages were failures so 
far as their original object was concerned, for he discovered 
neither a northeast nor a northwest passage to the East 
Indies, but their secondary results were very important. 
His discoveries of the arctic whale fisheries in his first two 
voyages led to the establishment of very valuable sea indus- 
tries both among the English and the Dutch. The third 
voyage led to the settlement of New Netherland. And the 
fourth led to the very profitable traffic with the natives of 
Hudson's Bay which is still maintained by the great Hudson 
Bay Company. 

Hudson Enters the Employ of the Dutch 
Prior to entering the service of the Dutch in 1609, Hud- 
son had hal relations with that group of geographical in- 
vestigators (including the Rev. Peter Plantius, one of the 
most eminent students of geography in Europe ; and Jodocus 
Hondius, a scientific map-maker and friend of Hudson's), 
whose researches made Amsterdam the center of geograph- 
ical science at that time. This is evident from the endorse- 
ment found upon a translation of a sailing treatise written 
by Iver Bcty (or Bardsen), showing how to reach Green- 
land. This treatise was " translated out of the Norsh Lan- 
guage into High Dutch in the yeere 1560. And after out 



Discovery of the Hudson River 23 

of High Dutch into Low Dutch by William Barentson of 
Amsterdam who was chief Pilot aforeisaid. The same 
Copie in High Dutch is in the hands of Jodocus Hondius, 
which I have scene. And this was translated out of Low 
Dutch by Master William Stere, Marchent, in the yeere 
1608 for the use of me Henrie Hudson. William Barent- 
son's Booke is in the hands of Master Peter Plantius who 
lent the same to me." 

This shows that Hudson, a great student of navigation 
and exploration, had had some connection with the Dutch 
investigators as early as 1608, and it was natural, after his 
return from his second voyage, when he was famous for his 
daring seamanship, that the Dutch should invite him to 
Holland in the interest of the Dutch East India Company. 
As the English Muscovy Company, which was probably 
absorbed in its newly discovered arctic fisheries, put no im- 
pediment in the way, Hudson accepted the call and went to 
Amsterdam. 

The Dutch East India Company, which plays such an im- 
portant part in the story of the exploration of the Hudson 
river, was composed of six different branches in different 
parts of the country, each managed by its own board of di- 
rectors. They were called the Chambers of Amsterdam, 
Zeeland, Delft, Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen. From 
these chambers was chosen a general Council of Seventeen 
who were the central governing body. 

In the conferences which ensued between Hudson and the 
Directors of the Company, differences of opinion were de- 
veloped among the Directors. The Amsterdam Chamber 
strongly favored engaging Hudson to search for a north- 
east passage. The Zeeland Chamber strongly objected. It 
was at length decided to pay Hudson his traveling expenses 
and send him back home, with a half promise to hire him 
in 1610. 

While all this was occurring, the French minister to The 
Hague, Pierre Jeannin, at the suggestion of Isaac Lemaire, 
was secretly urging his royal master Henry IV to avail 
himself of the opportunity to engage the great English 



24 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

navigator and secure for France the glory of, his possible 
achievements. Learning of this, the Amsterdam merchants 
perceived the necessity of securing Hudson at once if they 
wished to prevent his falling into French hands. But they 
were in a quandary. It would be several months before the 
next meeting of the representatives of the six chambers of 
the East India Company, and if they waited, they were afraid 
they would lose their chance. The Amsterdam Chamber 
therefore resolved to engage him on their own responsibility. 

On the 8th of January, 1609, " the Directors of the Dutch 
East India Company of the Chamber of Amsterdam," on 
the one part, and " Mr. Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted 
by Jodocus Hondius, on the other part," entered into a formal 
contract. The Directors agreed to man and equip a small 
ship or yacht with which Hudson should seek a passage 
around the northerly side of Nova Zembla, and then pro- 
ceed eastward until he could sail southward to the lati- 
tude of 60 degrees. He was to become acquainted as well 
as possible with the lands he saw and then return and give 
a faithful account of his voyage. For this voyage, as well 
as for the support of his wife and children, the Directors 
were to pay him 800 guilders or about $320. If he did not 
come back inside of a year, they were to give his wife 200 
guilders or $80 more — a rather small policy of life in- 
surance. If, however, he should come back after all, with 
the good news that he had found a safe passage, they were 
to reward him as they saw fit. And if, in that case, the 
Directors should determine to follow up the discovery by 
other voyages, Hudson and his family were to take up 
their residence in Holland and Hudson was to accept em- 
ployment with no other company. 

In making this contract, Hudson, who could not speak 
Dutch, was assisted by Jodocus Hondius as interpreter, and 
in the Dutch copy of the contract preserved in The Hague — 
not the original, but a Dutch copy — Hudson's first name 
is spelled three times " Henry." That was the way in which 
he signed it, and as he was an Englishman it is a mistake 
. to call him " Hendrick." On February 25, 1906, Governor 



Discovery of the Hudson River 



25 



Higgins gave his official opinion to the effect that the name 
should be spelled Henry. 

The ship which was fitted out for Hudson was named 
De Halve Maene, or the Half Moon. The people of Hol- 
land to-day are building an exact reproduction of that 
famous vessel and next fall it will be seen in the Hudson 




river just as its prototype was seen 300 years before. It will 
seem like a very small boat when it passes the great ocean 
steamers, 700 feet long, in New York harbor, for it will 
measure only 74.54 feet over all, 58.70 feet on the water 
line, 16.94 feet in breadth, and lO.oS feet deep (English 
measure). It will have three masts. On the foremast will 
be a square foresail and foretopsail. On the main mast will 



26 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

be a square mainsail a-nd maintopsail. On the mizzen mast 
will be a triangular latteen rigged sail. Across the bow- 
sprit will be rigged a yard from which will hang a square 
sail called in former times a sprit-sail. The boat, which 
will be of about 80 tons burden, will be high in the stern 
and bow and low amidships, and will look different from 
anything seen in these waters since the facsimiles of Colum- 
bus's caravels went up the river bound for the Chicago ex- 
position in 1893. 

Hudson's Famous Voyage of i6op 
Hudson set sail from Amsterdam on April 4, 1609, 
(N. S.) with a mixed crew of about eighteen Dutch and 
English sailors. From the Weepers' Tower, which, like 
several other landmarks of Hudson's time, still stands in 
Amsterdam, anxious eyes watched the departure of the 
little Half Moon on its perilous voyage. Hudson was two 
days on the Zuyder Zee, then passed the island of Texel and 
sailed up the coast of Norway. On May 5th he rounded 
the North Cape, — where in summer the sun can be seen at 
midnight — and steered toward Nova Zembla. On May 
19th, he reached the North Cape again on the return trip, 
having been baffled by the ice and the refusal of his crew 
further to attempt to find a northeast passage. 

Chagrined at his failure in this direction, and deter- 
mined to win success somehow, if possible, he proposed to 
his crew to search for a northwest passage by one of two 
routes. One route was by way of Davis Strait which had 
been discovered by John Davis in 1584. The other alter- 
native was to go to the coast of America to the latitude of 
40°. This idea had been suggested to him by some letters 
and maps which his friend Capt. John Smith had sent to 
him from Virginia and by which Smith had informed him 
that there was a sea leading into the western ocean between 
New England and Virginia. It is a curious fact that at this 
time, North America was believed to be as narrow at this 
point as it is at the Isthmus of Panama, and the Pacific 



Discovery of the Hudson River 27 

ocean was thoughl: to extend eastward as far as New York 
State.* The crew agreed to the latter proposition and 
Hudson turned his prow toward the American coast. 

Hudson reached the American coast July 12th, and on 
July i8th anchored in a harbor on the coast of Maine. 
There he remained long enough to make a new foremast 
from the pine trees that fringed the shore. Then, his un- 
ruly crew having driven the natives from their homes with 
firearms and plundered them, Hudson resumed his voyage 
southward. After touching at Cape Cod, he proceeded to 
a point about 100 miles south of Chesapeake Bay, then 
turned about, coasted northward, and entered the Delaware 
Bay. Finding this shallow stream unnavigable he con- 
tinued up the coast until the daylight of Wednesday, Sep- 
tember 2d, disclosed the low, sandy beaches of the northern 
New Jersey shore, looking like "broken islands."! At 
5 o'clock he anchored in sight of the high promontory be- 
lieved to be the Navesink Highlands on the south side of 
New York Bay. "This is a very good land to fall with 
and a pleasant land to see," says Juet at the end of his 
journal for that day. As New York Bay is regarded as 
the mouth of the Hudson River, September 2d is the com- 



*After it was found that the continents of North and South Am- 
erica blockaded the western route to China, the efiforts of the early 
explorers were directed toward the discovery of a passage ^//roz/^A 
North America to the western sea. A singular record of this fact is 
found in the name of the famous Lachine Rapids. Lachine (or La 
Chine, as originally written) is the French name for China, and was 
given in derision to a seigniory granted to La Salle on account of his 
efiforts to reach China by way of the Saint Lawrence. What the 
early explorers failed to discover the United States is making across 
the Isthmus of Panama — a short western route to the orient. 

tThe following description is based on the journal of Hudson's voy- 
age kept by his clerk Robert Juet: on the " Historie der Nederlan- 
den" (1614) by Van Meteren, who appears to have had access to 
Hudson's own journal now lost; and on the " Nieuwe Werelt " by 
De Laet who quotes a few words from Hudson verbatim. The refer- 
ences to landmarks by these authorities, liowever, are so general 
and the latitudes given are so uncertain, that the data in reg rd to 
localities are open to various interpretations. Students should there- 
fore be guarded against accepting positive assertions concerning the 
precise places of Hudson's anchorages. 



28 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

monly accepted date of Hudson's first personal acquaintance 
with the stream which bears his name. On Thursday, the 
3d, the Half Moon found good anchorage on the south side 
of the bay, believed to be inside of Sandy Hook. A week 
was spent in exploring the adjacent waters with the small 
boat, during which time the Half Moon appears to have 
been in the Lower Harbor. In this search, " they found a 
good entrance between two headlands," (probably the Nar- 
rows) " and thus entered on the 12th of .September into as 
fine a river as can be found." They ascended the river as 
wind and tide served, always anchoring at night. On Mon- 
day, the 14th, they " came to a streight between two points," 
(thought to be the narrow place between Stony and Ver- 
planck's Points) and that day entered the " very high and 
mountainous" region of the Highlands. On the 15th they 
" came to other mountains which lie from the river's side," 
an apt description of the Catskills. By Saturday, Septem- 
ber 19th, the Half Moon had reached her " farthest north," 
which, according to Van Meteren, was in latitude 42° 40'. 
If this latitude be correct, Hudson's northernmost anchor- 
age was opposite the site of the northern end of the city 
Albany. From this point Hudson sent the small boat to 
explore still farther in the hope of finding deeper water be- 
yond, but in this he was disappointed. Convinced that this 
was not the much desired route to the Pacific, he weighed 
anchor at noon on Wednesday, the 23d, and started down 
stream. By Tuesday the 29th, they had reached " the edge 
of the mountaines, or the northermost of the mountaines " 
(apparently the north gate of the Highlands) where a 
stiff southeast gale between the mountains detained them at 
anchor till Thursday, October ist. On the latter day they 
"got down below the mountaines" apparently to the vicinity 
of Stony and Verplanck's Points. On Friday, the 2d, the 
Half Moon anchored near " a cliffe that looked of the 
colour of a white greene." This cliff is one of the most 
accurately located landmarks in Hudson's river voyage, be- 
ing without doubt the green serpentine outcrop at Castle 
Point, Hoboken. 



Discovery of the Hudson River 29 

Hudson had now been in the Hudson valley just a month, 
and was delighted with it. He found the country full of 
great and magnificent oaks, of a size seldom seen, and an 
abundance of poplars, lindens and other trees useful in ship- 
building. He also found blue plum trees. The lands were 
as pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees as ever 
they had seen and very sweet smells came from them. To 
use Hudson's own words : " It is as pleasant a land as one 
need tread upon. The land is the finest for cultivation that 
I ever in my life set foot upon." 

On almost every day of Hudson's sojourn in this delight- 
ful region, the Indians visited the ship, either in friendship 
or hostility. They came in canoes, hollowed out of single 
logs, some of which were capable of holding as many as 
fourteen persons. They were dressed in mantles of 
feathers, deer skins, fox skins and other good furs, smoked 
great red or yellow copper tobacco pipes, wore copper orna- 
ments on their necks, and carried bows and arrows pointed 
with sharp stones. They brought with them green tobacco, 
sweet dried currants, red and white grapes, venison, Indian 
corn, pumpkins, oysters, hemp, beaver and otter skins, and 
other things which they either gave ceremoniously to Hud- 
son and his men or bartered for European knives, hatchets, 
beads and other trinkets. 

At various places along his route Hudson visited the 
native villages, in which he " saw a great store of men, 
women and children." The aboriginal habitation was a 
simple structure with an arched roof, made of bent saplings, 
covered with oak bark. The native bed was a mat of 
woven rushes, a pile of furs, or a heap of leaves. Corn was 
the staple of diet from which they made a bread which was 
excellent eating. Great quantities of corn and beans were 
dried for winter use. Besides corn and beans and the articles 
of food alreadv mentioned, they lived on birds and fish. Of 
the latter the river yielded salmon, mullets, rays and sturgeon 
in abundance. On lare occasions of the highest ceremony, 
they cooked a dog. 

In general, they were characterized as " a sensible and 
warlike people, whilst in the highest part the people were 



30 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

more friendly." It was noted, however, that they had a 
" great propensity to steal " and were " exceedingly adroit 
in carrying away whatever they took a fancy to." 

When Hudson landed at various places, he was generally 
received with marks of distinction. At one place " the 
swarthy natives all stood around and sung in their fashion." 

On another occasion ("in latitude 42° 18'," which, if 
accurate, would be three miles north of the City of Hudson), 
the navigator was paid the highest tribute in the range of 
Indian hospitality by their serving up, with a pair of 
pigeons and other delicacies, a fat dog. The latter was 
skinned in great haste with shells which they had taken 
from the river. When Hudson was about to leave this 
village, the Indians, thinking it was through fear, broke 
their bows and arrows in pieces to show their friendliness. 

On still another occasion, at Albany, they came aboard 
with a plateful of venison, made reverence to Hudson, and, 
presenting him with strings of wampum, " made an 
oration." 

Only those who have lived among the Indians or especi- 
ally studied their customs can realize the full meaning of 
these formal ceremonies — the singing, the dog- feast, the 
oration and the wampum strings. 

The friendly relations between Hudson and the Indians 
of the upper reaches of the river had a far-reaching effect 
on the history of the State. On August 29 — less than a 
month before Hudson's arrival at the site of Albany, — 
Champlain and a party of Huron Indians had fought and 
utterly defeated a party of Iroquois at the head of Lake 
Champlain. By this battle, the French incurred the bitter 
enmity of the New York Indians, while in contrast with 
that conflict, Hudson's friendly feast remained in their 
traditions for 250 years. The result was that the New 
York Indians were always more friendly toward the Dutch 
and English pioneers than toward the French, and the 
French never obtained a permanent foothold in this State. 

While at Albany, the Europeans reciprocated the 
aboriginal courtesies by giving their Indian visitors wine 



Discovery of the Hudson River 31 

and aqua vitae, " so that they were all merrie " and one was 
made dead drunk. There is something unintentionally 
pathetic in Juet's record: "And that was strange to them; 
for they could not tell how to take it." 

The relations of the white and red men in the lower 
reaches of the river were not, however, always of this 
friendly character. That they were not so, there is reason 
to believe, was due more to the uncontrollable character of 
Hudson's mixed crew than to the master himself. The first 
conflict occurred on September 6th while the Half Moon 
was in the Lower Harbor and while John Colman and four 
others in the small boat were away exploring the neighbor- 
ing waters. In some way, Colman's party incurred the 
hostility of the native j and was attacked. Colman was 
killed with an arrow in his neck and two of his companions 
were wounded. 

International relations were further strained on the 9th 
when three Indians who were visiting the Half Moon in a 
friendly way were made prisoners. One jumped over- 
board and the other two were dressed in red coats. On the 
morning of the 15th, while in the Highlands, these two 
crawled out of a port-hole and swam away, to make trouble 
later. 

On October i, after the Half Moon had " got down below 
the mountaynes " (or Highlands) on the return trip, an 
Indian, who had climbed up by the rudder to the cabin 
window, was caught stealing Juet's pillow, two shirts and 
two cartridge belts. Thereupon the mate shot and killed 
him. The other canoes near the ship fled, some of the 
occupants jumping out and swimming for shore. The 
ship's boat was manned and put out to recover the stolen 
articles, and when one of the Indians who was in the water 
reached up and caught hold of the gunwale, the cook cut 
off his hand with a sword and he was drowned. 

After these occurrences, it is not surprising that on Octo- 
ber 2d, when the Half Moon was apparently in the vicinity 
of the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil creek, the Indians came 
out in force and attacked the white men. In the unequal 



32 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

contest between hollowed-log canoes and the 8o-ton Half 
Moon, and between bows and arrows on the one side and 
firearms on the other, there could be only one result. The 
Indians were driven off with a loss of eight or ten killed, 
while the Europeans escaped unscratched to the shelter of 
the Hoboken cliff' of green on the other side of the river 
farther down. 

The Half Moon lay at anchor at Hoboken from October 
2d to October 4th, the 3d being very stormy. On the 4th 
she dropped down the harbor and passed out to sea. Then 
Hudson and his crew took counsel as to their next move. 
The Dutch mate suggested that they try for Davis Strait. 
But Hudson was opposed to that venture now. He lacked 
some necessary provisions ; and his crew were so unwilling 
and mutinous that at times they had threatened him sav- 
agely. He concluded, therefore, that it was best to go back 
home. So they kept their prow toward the east and on 
November 7th arrived at Dartmouth, Eng. Thence, after 
some delay, Hudson went to Holland. 

The Hudson River. 
The great river which Hudson explored has had many 
names. It was called Cahohatea and Skanehtade Gahunda 
by the Iroquois,* Mahicanituc or Mahican river by the 
Mohican Indians, and Shatemuc by other Indians; Una 
Grandissima Riviera by Verazzano, (1524), whence Rio 
Grande, Riviere Grande and Grand River ; Rio de San 
Antonio or River of Saint Anthonyf by Gomez (1525) ; 
Rio de Gamas by the Spaniards (1525-1600) ; River of the 
Mountains by Hudson ( 1609) , or Montaigne Rivier on Dutch 
maps (161 5-1664) ; River Manhattes by De Laet (1625), or 
Manhattans Rivier on Dutch maps (1615-1664); River 
Mauritius or Maurits Rivier from Maurice, Prince of 



* Skanehtade Gahunda in the Seneca dialect means the river beyond 
the openings. The Indians gave the name Skanehtade to the site of 
Schenectady long before the advent of the whites, referring to the 
openings b tween the Hudson and the Mohawk at Schenectady. 
Gahunda means river. 

t Whence, possibly, the name of the mountain just north of Peek- 
skill, called Anthony's Nose. 



Discovery of the Hudson River 33 

Orange, during- the Dutch period; and the Noort Rivier 
(Dutch period) or North River (EngHsh) to distinguish it 
from the south or Delaware River.* Hudson's name has 
displaced all of these except the North river which is ap- 
plied in a limited way to that portion of the river opposite 
the City of New York. 

The Hudson river is very remarkable in several respects. 
In the first place, for 150 miles of its length it is not a true 
river but a fiord. From Albany to the ocean its rock bot- 
tom, with the exception of a few islands, is below sea- 
level. How far below, is not accurately known. Op- 
posite Storm King mountain, where the engineers of the 
new aqueduct for supplying New York City with water 
from the Catskills hoped to build a tunnel under the river, 
they have bored a thousand feet down into the dirt and sand 
that fill the gorge under the water and have not been able to 
find rock bottom. The shore line at Albany is at practically 
the same elevation as the shore line at New York and the 
tide rises at Albany two and eight-tenths feet. This up- 
ward and downward flowing of the tide, of which Hudson 
took advantage in his voyage, had, of course, long been 
noticed by the Indians who spoke of the river with wonder 
as the stream that flowed both ways. 

The river is also remarkable for its great natural beauty. 
The distinguished German surgeon Dr. Adolf Lorenz, while 
visiting on its shores in 1902, pronounced it more beautiful 
than the Rhine. This beauty, so famous throughout the 
world, is due to very ancient causes ; and the person who 
will search beyond the surface appearances for those causes 
will truly find, as Shakespeare says, " sermons in stones and 
books in the running brook." The variety of the Hudson's 
scenery is due to the extraordinary range of its geological 
history. From its source to the sea it is an epitome of 
creation. It rises in the Adirondack mountains which, now 
towering to a height of 5,402 feet, although once much 

* The late John Fiske, in his " Dutch and Quaker Colonies " 
expresses the opinion that the Hudson is also identical with the 
River of Norumbega, but it does not appear to the present writer 
that the identity is satisfactorily established. 



34 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

higher, lifted their heads above the great primeval flood 
when almost all the rest of the United States was still a 
wild waste of waters. The famous Highlands of the Hud- 
son, between which Hudson sailed 300 years ago, are of the 
same ancient Archaean rocks and were once a group of 
islands. The Catskills are more modern and the Palisades 
still younger. The latter were once a fiery, molten mass, 
and their columnar shape is due to the manner in which that 
mass cooled ofif. These few facts will indicate what a 
storehouse for fascinating research the Hudson valley is 
for the person, young or old, who will study it with the 
mind as well as the eye. 

Civilization followed Hudson's voyage into the Hudson 
River valley, partly because the valley was beautiful and at- 
tractive, partly because it was fertile, partly on account of 
the very valuable fur trade which was the foundation of 
New York commerce, and partly for other reasons, but 
very largely on account of the relation of the river to other 
lines of water travel. Before the white man's advent, an 
Indian could start from New York harbor, paddle up the 
Hudson to Fort Edward, thence up a little creek, and, mak- 
ing a short carry, resume his journey down Wood creek* 
and pass through Lake Champlain and the Sorel river to 
the St. Lawrence. Thence he could ascend to the Great 
Lakes or descend to the Atlantic ocean. Or, going up the 
Hudson and Mohawk, with a short carry at Rome, he could 
proceed down another Wood creek and by way of Oneida 
lake and the Oswego river to Lake Ontario, and thence, 
either to the ocean or to the remotest regions of Lake 
Superior. The same geological forces which produced this 
network of water connections also formed the almost level 
terrace along which the Indians instinctively made their 
great east and west trail from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and 
along which, at a later date, the white men built the Erie 
canal. The remarkable situation of their territory with 
relation to the Hudson river and these other waters was a 



* The Champlain canal now connects the Hudson river and Lake 
Champlain by this route. 



Discovery of the Hudson River 35 

leading factor of the preeminence of the Iroquois, the most 
powerful aboriginal people in America north of Mexico, 
and, with the advent of European civilization, has been one 
of the most potent causes of the preeminence of New York 
as the Empire State. It is only when this is realized that 
we can fully appreciate the importance of Hudson's ser- 
vices to civilization in making a river with such resources 
known to the world. 

Hudson's voyage was followed immediately by the advent 
of Dutch traders who built temporary habitations on Man- 
hattan Island and at the site of Albany and at these trad- 
ing posts carried on a lucrative fur trade with the Indians. 
In 1620, the Puritans in Holland asked permission to go to 
the North river to settle, and although the permission was 
refused, they actually started out for New Netherland. 
Rough weather, however, compelled them to take refuge in- 
side of Cape Cod, and they eventually settled at Plymouth 
instead of on Manhattan Island.* 

Although a few traders' huts had been erected at Man- 
hattan as early as 1613, and also at the site of Albany about 
that time, it was not until 1624 that a permanent settlement 
was effected at Albany and 1626 at New York. 

From that time the Colony grew steadily. New Nether- 
land was captured by the English in 1664; recaptured by 
the Dutch in 1673 ; and repossessed by the English in 1674. 
For over a century it remained a colony of Great Britain. 
Then came the American Revolution and American Inde- 
pendence. In 1807, twenty-four years after the evacua- 
tion of New York by the British, occurred the other great 
event which the Hudson-Fulton celebration commemorates, 
namely, the successful application of steam to navigation 
by Robert Fulton on the river which Hudson had explored. 

* Bradford's " History of Plimouth Plantation " says : " After 
longe beating at sea, they fell with that land which is called 
Cape Cod. . . After some deliberation they tacked aboute and 
resolved to stand for ye southward (ye wind & weather being 
faire) to finde some place aboute Hudsons river for their habita- 
tion. But after they had sailed yt course aboute halfe ye day, 
they fell amongst deangerous shoulds and roring breakers. . . 
and as they conceived them selves in great danger, they resolved 
to bear up againe for the Cape." 



36 

PART II. 

THE INVENTION OF STEAM NAVIGATION. 
The State of Naval Science Before Fulton's Invention. 



When, in the morning of Creation, the waters under 
the firmament were gathered together and the dry land ap- 
peared, not only was a habitation for man prepared, but 
limits were set to his natural movements. To overcome the 
natural barriers which the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers of 
the earth presented, he has applied his God-given faculties 
ever since. 

To appreciate the vast importance of the successful ap- 
plication of steam to navigation by Robert Fulton, one must 
compare the giant stride which has been made in that 
science in the 102 years since the voyage of the Clermont 
with the thousands of years of slow progress before the 
invention of the steamboat. 

The Hudson river has seen every stage of nautical de- 
velopment, from the earliest to the most modern. The first 
attempts at navigation by primitive man were doubtless by 
means of a floating log. Then hs learned to hollow the 
log by fire and later to construct his boat from the bark of 
the tree. The first natural source of power for propulsion 
was the human muscle. The second source of power was 
the wind, and the first sails were the leafy boughs of trees 
and the skins of animals. With the art of weaving came 
cloth sails. After the lapse of thousands upon thousands 
of years, we find at the beginning of the Christian era that 
human muscle and the winds were still the only means yet 
employed for the propulsion of ships. The galleys of 
Imperial Rome sailed the Mediterranean and ventured as 
far as Britain; but the ocean was a sea of darkness which 
their imagination peopled with horrible monsters, and to 
enter which they believed meant certain death. 
• Nearly fifteen hundred years more elapsed before the 
great mariner appeared who dared brave the unknown ter- 




Robert Fultox 

From paimir.g by Benjamin West in possession of Fulton's grandson, Mr. 
Robert Fulton Ludlow of Clavcrack, N. Y. 



Invention of Steam Navigation 37 

rors of that sea; but Columbus' voyage, occupying 36 days 
from the Canaries to the West Indies, was the triumph of 
this personal character, genius and courage and not of any 
new invention in navigation, for his little caravels did not 
differ from similar vessels of the period, and while they 
showed the progress that had been made in ship-building in 
fifteen centuries, yet they were subject to all the vicissitudes 
of wind-blown ships. 

Another century elapsed and Hudson's yacht entered New 
York harbor and spent five days sailing over the course to 
Albany, which Fulton covered in thirty-two running hours 
in August 1807, and which the modern steamboat covers 
in nine and one-half hours. But still no new force had been 
discovered or invented up to Hudson's time. Even the tri- 
angular jib and fore-and-aft sails had not been devised nor 
could a ship perform the paradoxical feat of later sailing 
vessels of " sailing on the wind." It took Hudson 34 days 
to sail from Sandy Hook to Dartmouth, only two days less 
than Columbus consumed between the Canaries and West 
Indies. 

Time rolled on and nearly two more centuries elapsed. 
The sailing vessel was developed to a high degree of perfec- 
tion, and the full-rigged ship as she stood up New York 
harbor at the beginning of the 19th century was truly a 
beautiful and impressive sight with her cloud-like masses 
of canvas swelling in the breeze. But still she was the 
slave of old King yEolus and could move only by his 
favor. She had no independence of action, no automatic 
power of motion ; and it took her about as long to cross 
the ocean as it took Columbus and Hudson. It was not 
only from the political slavery of some powerful earthly 
monarch, but from the slavery of the winds, that the seas 
were now about to be emancipated by the aid of Robert 
Fulton. 

In the year 1765, the year of Fulton's birth, the thought- 
ful mind of a Scotch youth of 29 years living in Glasgow 
was turned toward the inventions which were to make 
it possible for Fulton to revolutionize the art of pro- 



38 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

pelling vessels. The history of science and invention is 
so full of cases in which great discoveries have resulted 
from the observation of simple things, that we may take 
this power of appreciating the significance of small things 
as one of the criteria of a great mind. Thousands of per- 
sons had seen that lamp swinging in Pisa cathedral before 
Galileo found in it the law of the pendulum. Apples have 
fallen from trees since the Garden of Eden, but it re- 
mained for Newton to find in that familiar sight his great 
discovery of the universal law of gravitation. There were 
steam engines in operation before James Watt was born, 
but his alert and comprehending faculties found in the 
contemplation of a common tea-kettle, according to popular 
tradition, the suggestions of his great inventions which 
revolutionized the use of steam and made him the father 
of the steam engine. 

During the next lo years after Watt's first experiments 
inventive genius in England and France was actively en- 
gaged in developing the steam engine. Then came the in- 
terruption of the American Revolution. After the Revolu- 
tion, a sort of mania for driving boats by steam began to 
prevail. In 1785, James Rumsey was experimenting with 
mechanical and steam propulsion, but it was not until 1786 
that we find " the first boat successfully propelled by steam 
in America," according to Admiral Preble, in John Fitch's 
clumsy contrivance which was tried on the Delaware July 
27th of that year. This boat was worked by gangs of oars 
or paddles arranged in a framework at the boat's sides. 

At the conclusion of this paper we shall see why the 
priority of the experiments of Fitch and others need not 
deprive Fulton of the distinction which is popularly ac- 
corded to him as " the father of American steamboating." 
But to shut our eyes to the minor successes of Fulton's 
predecessors is unjust to those struggling and self-sacrific- 
ing pioneers, and it is unjust to Fulton himself, for it dis- 
qualifies us from forming a true estimate of the genius and 
character by which Fulton was able not only to solve the 
profound problems of a new science, but also to inspire the 



Invention of Steam Navigation 39 

confidence and command the material resources which were 
needed to put his ideas into practical operation. 

In August, 1787, Fitch ran an improved boat (the second 
American steamboat) on the Delaware at Philadelphia. On 
December 3, 1787, James Rumsey ran the third steamboat, 
according to Preble's tables. This boat, operated at 
Shepardstown, on the Potomac, was propelled by means of 
water sucked in a.t the bow and expelled at the stern by 
the force of steam. The fourth steamboat was Fitch's 
which ran from Philadelphia to Burlington in 1788. It was 
driven by paddles at the stern. In 1789, Fitch tried the 
fifth steamboat at Philadelphia. It made eight miles an 
hour and in 1790 ran regularly as a packet. The sixth 
steamboat was a stern-wheeler, built by Samuel Morey of 
Connecticut. It sailed from Hartford to New York in 
1794, having on board Chancellor Robert R. Livingston and 
other well-known citizens of New York. 

In 1796, Fitch transferred his activities to New York 
City. In that year he operated on the old Collect pond, 
which once existed where now the Criminal Courts building 
and City prison stand, the seventh American steamboat. 
In comparison with his first attempt the progress of a dec- 
ade was very apparent. His first production in 1786, 
though a practical working boat, was a clumsy affair, but 
one remove from oars worked by hand power. His boat 
of 1796 combined with the side wheels (which had proved 
moderately effective on the Delaware) the screw propeller. 
It has been claimed that both Chancellor Livingston and 
Fulton were aboard of the boat, but Fulton was abroad at 
this time. It is quite likely, however, that the Chancellor 
was a spectator if not a passenger. 

The model of Fitch's boat in the New York Historical 
Society, made by John Hutchings of Williamsburgh in 
1851, gives an excellent idea of the craft. The boiler con- 
sisted of a ten-gallon iron kettle covered with a thick plank 
lid firmly fastened down by a transverse iron bar. The 
cylinders were of wood. After she had gone around the 
pond a couple of times she had to stop and take more 



40 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

water into her primitive boiler. Fitch was undoubtedly a 
genius and was working on the right track, but un- 
fortunately could not command the means to pay for the 
proper machinery. 

Another steamboat by Morey on the Connecticut in 1797 
comes eighth in order. In the same year Chancellor Liv- 
ingston appears as more than an interested spectator of 
others' experiments. The extent to which this great man 
went into both the theory and practice of steam navigation 
is realized probably by few. He is remembered for his 
brilliant career at the bar, on the bench, in the Continental 
Congress where he was a member of the Committee ap- 
pointed to prepare the Declaration of Independence ; in the 
office of Secretary for Foreign Affairs; as Minister to 
France and one of the negotiators of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase; but in connection with steam navigation, he is gen- 
erally regarded simply as the wealthy and generous patron 
of Fulton. As a matter of fact, if there had been no Ful- 
ton, Livingston himself might have been the father of the 
steamboat. 

Living in his once beautiful but now sadly decayed 
mansion about one and one-half miles north of Tivoli and 
overlooking the Hudson, he had reflected profoundly on 
the subject of navigating that stream long before he first 
met Fulton. The extent to which he had gone into the sub- 
ject is notably reflected in a letter written in this house 
January 26, 1799, to President Jefferson, in which the de- 
fects of Watt's engine and the principles of steam mechanics 
are discussed. In March, 1798, he employed one Nisbet to 
construct a steamboat according to his ideas at a place 
south of Tivoli called De Koven's Bay ; and this was the 
ninth American steamboat. This year. Fitch died, and the 
monopoly of steam navigation which the New York Legis- 
lature had given him in 1787 was annulled and given to 
Livingston for 20 years. 

The limits of this paper will not permit us to do more 
than mention by name five other American steamboacs 
which appeared before the Clermont, namely, (loth) Fitch's 



Invention of Steam Navigation 41 

boat on the Ohio in 1798 before he died; (nth) ,the boat 
built under the joint auspices of Nicholas Roosevelt, John 
Stevens and Chancellor Livingston in the same year; 
(i2th) Oliver Evans' boat on the Delaware in 1804; (13th) 
Stevens' boat on the Hudson in 1804; and (14th) Stevens' 
on the Hudson in 1806. 

This brief review, hasty as it is, and wdiich has not taken 
into consideration similar efforts in England, will give some 
idea of the intense competition between active minds at this 
time in the realm of steam navigation and prepare us the 
better to estimate Fulton's achievement in 1807. 

Robert Fulton — 1765 to 1S07. 

It is a mistake to imagine that Fulton's contribution to 
science was limited to his achievement on the Hudson river 
in 1807. His genius had a much wider scope, and while we 
are ostensibly commemorating the Clermont's trip, we are in 
fact honoring the memory of a man to the range of whose 
genius the ocean set no bounds. 

In a pamphlet entitled " Torpedo War, or. Submarine 
Explosions," addressed to President Madison in 1810, Ful- 
ton adopted as his motto, " The liberty of the seas will be 
the happiness of the earth." For that principle England 
had annihilated Spain's Invincible Armada in 1588. For 
that principle the United States fought the mother country 
a second time in 1812-1815. It was a sentiment worthy 
of a broad mind and a noble character and may be said to 
have been the Polaris of Fulton's aims and ambitions. 

Fulton was born of Irish parents in Little Britain (now 
Fulton Township), in Lancaster county, Pa., in 1765. As 
a boy he manifested a decided talent for drawing, and he 
was frequently employed by Lancaster manufacturers to 
make designs for guns. He was also expert at calculation, 
and was occasionally engaged by gunsmiths to calculate the 
force, size, bore and range of guns. These two talents for 
drawing and calculation, thus wedded in early life, were 
never afterward dissociated, and to their fortunate pos- 
session was doubtless due in large measure his subsequent 
successes as an inventor. 



42 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

In 1779, he began to show a great fondness for invention. 
After a fatiguing fishing trip with his friend Christopher 
Gumpf, one day, he went into retirement for a week; and 
then reappeared, to announce to Christopher that he was 
tired of poHng a fishing boat, and to exhibit the model of a 
boat fitted with paddle wheels worked by hand. 

At the age of seventeen he left Lancaster for Philadelphia 
to study landscape and portrait painting and mechanical 
drawing. By May 6, 1786, at the age of twenty-one he had 
acquired means to buy a home for his widowed mother in 
Washington county. 

Having thus made filial provision for his mother, and as 
he was suffering from pulmonary trouble, he was per- 
suaded to go to England for his health and to study art 
under his former neighbor Benjamin West. But the 
Genius of Invention which possessed him would not leave 
him alone to pursue art single minded, and in 1793 we find 
him engaged on a plan for the improvement of inland navi- 
gation, and writing to Lord Stanhope, under date of Sep- 
tember 30, 1793, concerning the principles of an invention 
which he said he had discovered respecting the moving of 
ships by steam. 

In May, 1794, he secured from the British government 
a patent for a double-inclined plane to be used for trans- 
portation purposes. In 1795 he sumbitted to Lord Stan- 
hope drawings of an apparatus for steam navigation; and 
in 1796 he published in London a " Treatise on the Im- 
provement of Canal Navigation " by the use of inclined 
planes and the weight of water to raise vessels from one 
level to another. It would be interesting to know what 
Benjamin West thought of his pupil's proficiency in art at 
this period of his career. 

Of the fact that Fulton possessed a decided talent for art, 
notwithstanding his excursions into mechanics and inven- 
tions, we have excellent proof. His portrait hanging in the 
rooms of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 
New York City, and ascribed to his own brush, is a highly 
creditable product. In 1797, he went to Paris and painted 



Invention of Steam Navigation 43 

the first panorama that Paris ever had. Few visitors to 
Paris to-day who pass through the Rue des Panoramas and 
the Passage des Panoramas reahze that these names are 
relics of Fulton's first efforts to support himself in the 
French capital while developing his plans to overcome 
England with steamboats and torpedos. 

In Paris, Fulton lived with the American Minister Joel 
Barlow, of whom he painted a fine portrait now owned by 
Fulton's descendant, Mr. Robert Fulton Ludlow of 
Claverack. He also designed the illustrations for Barlow's 
classic poem entitled " The Columbiad." 

But the truth of Saint Matthew's saying that " no man 
can serve two masters " soon became apparent in Fulton's 
case and Invention eventually won him from Art. 

During his first year in Paris he made experiments with 
torpedoes in the Seine. With a view to discovering a 
means of applying his torpedoes to the enemy's ships, his 
thoughts turned to submarine boats, and he proposed to 
" deliver France and the whole world from British oppres- 
sion." In the spring of 1801 he went to Brest to make ex- 
periments with a plunging boat which he had constructed 
the previous winter. On July 3, 1801, and on subsequent 
dates, he gave exhibitions of his boat called the Nautilus, in 
the harbor. Proceeding under sail a suitable distance from 
shore, accompanied by three companions, he struck the 
mast and sails, and plunged below the surface where, on 
one occasion, he remained four hours and twenty minutes. 
Under water, the boat was propelled by a machine worked 
by hand, and the respiration of the crew was maintained by 
a supply of compressed air in a copper globe. 

Interesting as this demonstration was, Fulton realized 
that to " deliver the world from British oppression " some- 
thing more than a hand-power submarine boat was needed. 

In 1 801 Livingston arrived in Paris as Minister Pleni- 
potentiary. Livingston was conversant with everything 
that had been attempted and accomplished in America, and 
Fulton with everything of a similar nature in England. 
The coming together of these two men marks a turning 



44 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

point in history.'^ Fulton had genius. Livingston had the 
genius to perceive it. With Livingston's assistance, Fulton 
designed and submitted to Napoleon in 1803 the plans for 
a side-wheel steamboat. This was constructed ; but un- 
fortunately, just as he was about to give an exhibition of 
its powers, it was sunk in the Seine by a heavy wind. A 
new boat was built, and with it, on August 9, 1803, Fulton 
achieved a complete and brilliant success. But the former 
accident had produced a fatal effect. The French com- 
mission reported unfavorably and Napoleon missed one of 
the greatest opportunities in his career. The late Lord 
Acton, when asked at Cambridge a short time before his 
death what he considered the most important event in the 
19th Century with respect to English history, replied that 
it was the sinking of Fulton's boat in the Seine, in 1803. 

Discouraged by lack of Government support in France, 
Fulton then returned to England and made demonstrations 
of his inventions. He devised various methods for sinking 
ships with torpedoes. One of his methods was to set afloat 
two clockwork torpedoes connected by a rope, so that they 
would drift down on either side of the bow of the enemy's 
ship, lodge and discharge. Another device for affixing the 
torpedo was by means of a harpoon shot from a gun. 
Still another device was an anchored trigger-torpedo, to be 
exploded by contact. 

On October 15, 1805, he blew up the condemned brig 
Dorothea in Walmar Roads, near Deal, as a demonstration 
of the efficiency of submarine explosions. That the 
English officials appreciated the value of Fulton's inven- 
tions appears from their offer of a considerable reward if 
he would consent to suppress them forever, so that neither 
his own nor any other country could use them. This he 
indignantly refused to do, saying, in a paper which he read 
in August, 1806, to certain gentlemen appointed by the 
British ministry to confer with him: "At all events, what- 
ever may be your award, I never will consent to let these 
inventions lie dormant should my country at any time need 
them. Were you to grant me an annuity of 20,000 pounds 



InvQption of Steam Navigation 45 

a year, I would sacrifice all to the safety and independence 
of my country." 

He concludes a letter to Lord Grenville as follows : " It 
has never been my intention to hide these inventions from 
the world on any consideration. * * * j have ever con- 
sidered the interest of America, free commerce, the interest 
of mankind, the magnitude of the object in view, and the 
rational reputation connected with it, superior to all cal- 
culations of a pecuniary nature." 

Those noble sentiments entitle Fulton to a place in the 
foremost rank of American patriots, as his inventive genius 
placed him in the foremost ranks of American inventors. 

The Voyage of the Clermont. 

Soon after expressing those sentiments and after having 
spent about fifteen years in England and France, Fulton re- 
turned to New York. The city of a century ago had a 
population of only about 80,000 souls. It ranked second to 
Philadelphia. Its closely settled portion was below the 
latitude of City Hall, with straggling buildings along the 
Bowery, Broadway and Greenwich street as far north as 
the latitude of Greenwich. Greenwich was closely settled 
and included the State's Prison from the neighborhood of 
which the Clermont started. 

On March 10, 1807, Fulton took lodging at Mrs. Lor- 
ing's fashionable boarding-house at No. 13 Broadway. In 
1809 and 1810 he lived at No. 100 Reade street; in 181 1 at 
133 Chambers street; and from 1812 to the time of his 
death in what is now called Battery place, in the rear of 
No. I Broadway. There was a vacant lot between his house 
and No. i Broadway. 

Before returning to New York Fulton had ordered from 
Watt and Bolton in England the engine for a new steam- 
boat which, upon his arrival, he began to build at Charles 
Brown's shipyard near Corlear's Hook and which he called 
the Clermont. In the Hudson-Fulton Celebration there 
will be an accurate reproduction of that historic vessel, the 
result of the most critical, painstaking and thorough in- 



Invention of Steam Navigation 47 

vestigation that was ever applied to such a problem. The 
task of ascertaining the appearance of the Clermont a cen- 
tury after she was built was not an easy one, for the 
reason that while drawings of her engine were in existence, 
there was no contemporary picture of her hull. But 
from Fulton's statement concerning his first boat in 
the specifications upon which he obtained his second 
patent of October 2, 1810,* and from other sources the fol- 
lowing facts are now perfectly established : The original 
Clermont was 150 feet long and 13 feet wide, with 7 feet 
depth of hold. She drew 2 feet of water. Her hull (below 
the deck) had wedge-shaped bow and stern, cut sharp to 
the angle of sixty degrees. In horizontal plan her sides 
were parallel and she was almost wall-sided, being a very 
little wider on deck than on the bottom. Her bottom was 
Eat with no keel, and she had two steering-boards or lee- 
boards to prevent drifting sideways. She had two masts, 
but no bowsprit or figurehead. She had two cabins, one 
forward and one aft. The tiller by which she was steered 
was at the back end of the after cabin so that it was diffi- 
cult for the helmsman to see what lay ahead. The engine, 
which was made in England, was amidship between the two 
cabins and was uncovered. The boiler was of copper. The 
paddlewheels, 15 feet in diameter, were uncovered, which 
resulted in drenching the passengers, and no guards pro- 
tected the wheels from collision. Later, the paddlewheels 
were covered. To turn around, one paddlewheel was dis- 
connected. The flywheels of the engine were outside of the 
hull forward of the paddlewheels, and revolved the same 
way. On one occasion, when one of the paddlewheels was 
disabled, it is said, paddles were attached to the flywheel 
and the voyage continued. In the winter of 1807-1808 the 
Clermont was widened to 16 feet on the bottom and 18 feet 



* Contained in "A Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Steam 
Navigation" by Prof. Bennet Woodcroft of London (1848) who 
was a distinguished authority on patents. 



48 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

on deck to give her greater stability and she was otherwise 
improved. 

A few days before August 17 of that year, this strange 
looking craft was taken around from the East River to the 
North River and moored near the old State's Prison, which 
stood on the square now bounded by Washington, West 
Tenth, West and Charles streets. 

At length, on Monday, August 17, the American Citizen 
contained this momentous announcement : 

" Mr. Fulton's ingenious Steam Boat, invented with a 
View to the Navigation of The Mississippi from New Or- 
leans upwards. Sails to-day from the North River, near 
The State Prison, to Albany, The Velosity of The Steam 
Boat is Calculated at 4 miles an hour ; it is said that it will 
make a progress of two against The Current of The Mis- 
sissippi ; and if so it will certainly be a very valuable acqui- 
sition to the Commerce of the Western States." 

That morning, the shore of the river was crowded with 
thousands of citizens, many of whom had come to deride 
what was called " Fulton's Folly." Jeers and cat-calls 
saluted Fulton's ears, and the waggishly inclined signifi- 
cantly tapped their foreheads. "God help you, Bobby!" 
cried one. "A fool and his money are soon parted " cried 
another. " Bring us back a chip of the North Pole " face- 
tiously shouted another. 

Fulton, pale, but with an air of confidence, went about 
his preparations to start. Presently, dense volumes of 
smoke began to pour forth from the smoke-stack. The 
boiler began to hiss. At i o'clock the hawser was drawn 
in, the throttle opened, and to the accompaniment of the 
stertorous exhaust, the uncovered side-wheels began to 
quiver, then slowly to revolve. A hush fell on the specta- 
tors. Fulton's own hand at the helm turned the bow. The 
Clermont moved out into the stream, the steam connections 
hissing at the joints, the crude machinery thumping and 
groaning, the wheels splashing and the smoke-stack belch- 
ing like a volcano. The boat continued to gather mo- 
mentum and move away. Then the nervous tension of the 



Invention of Steam Navigation 49 

situation was broken. All on board swung their hats in 
the air and gave a cheer, and like an echo, magnified a 
thousand times, came back a roar of applause from the 
shore. Skeptics had been converted. Those who came to 
scoff remained to cheer. The Clermont was a success, and 
steam navigation in America was established beyond per- 
adventure. 

As the steamboat proceeded up the river, it spread con- 
sternation among superstitious mariners and unsophisticated 
countrymen. No such sight had ever been seen before. 
The pine wood used for fuel produced a torrent of black 
smoke, flame and sparks, which belched forth to a great 
heieht above the smoke-stack. The reverberation of the ex- 
haust as the boat passed the Palisades was something abso- 
lutely unheard before by human ears in this region. Crews 
of other vessels were terrified. Many at first sight fell on 
their knees, disappeared below decks or made for land. One 
honest countryman, after beholding the unaccountable ob- 
ject from the shore, ran home and told his wife that he 
had seen " the Devil on his way to Albany in a saw mill." 
Not since Hudson's Half Moon had sailed over the same 
course nearly 200 years before, exciting the wonder and 
awe of the aborigines, had such an amazing sight been seen 
by the neighboring inhabitants. 

When the Clermont reached Haverstraw Bay, says one 
of the passengers, a man in a skiff lay waiting for it. He 
appeared to be a miller, and the paddle-wheels attracted his 
attention. He asked permission to go aboard and Fulton 
ordered a line to be thrown to him. The miller said he 
" did not know about a mill going up-stream and came to 
inquire about it." One of the passengers seeing through 
the simple-minded visitor, but without disabusing him of 
his mistake, showed him all the machinery and contrivances 
and the device for throwing the wheels out of gear when 
the mill was required to come about. Presently the visitor 
said, " That will do. Now show me the millstones." " Oh," 
said the passenger, " that is a secret which the master has 
never told us yet ; but when we come back from Albany 



50 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

with a load of corn, then if yoa come aboard, you will see 
the meal fly." 

At I o'clock on Tuesday, the boat arrived at the place 
after which Fulton, in honor of his distinguished colleague, 
had named the steamboat. Clermont dock, the landing 
place at Chancellor Livingston's place, is no miles from 
New York, and that distance had been traversed against 
the wind in just 24 hours. The average speed thus far 
had been about 4.6 miles an hour. Here Fulton rested 
from I o'clock Tuesday until 9 a. m. Wednesday. His 
feelings of elation can readily be imagined. His voyage 
thus far had been one of triumphant success. This was 
the first time the waters of the Hudson had been 
churned by steam power from the briny depths of New 
York harbor to the fresh-water reaches of the upper river. 
It was the first all-night steamboat trip ever made. 

Resuming their journey the next day, Wednesday, at 
9 a. m., the Clermont reached Albany, distant 40 miles, at 
5 p. m. The running time for the whole 150 miles had 
been 32 hours, or at the rate of nearly 5 miles an hour. 
The return trip on Thursday and Friday was made in 30 
hours running time, or an average of just 5 miles an hour. 
The wind had been against the Clermont both ways, says 
Fulton, so that no advantage could be derived from his 
sails. The whole journey, therefore, had been performed 
by the power of the steam engine. 

On Saturday, August 22, the American Citizen bestowed 
upon this extraordinary achievement the following thirty- 
seven words of comment : 

" We congratulate Mr. Fulton and the Country on his 
success in the steam boat, which cannot fail of being very 
advantageous. W^e understand that not the smallest incon- 
venience is felt in the boat either from heat or smoke." 

Fulton's Subsequent Career 
Fulton's victory was won by a narrow margin, for com- 
petition was following close upon his heels, and could John 
Stevens of Hoboken and his son, Robert L. Stevens, have 



Invention of Steam Navigation 51 

obtained engines in time, they might have anticipated the 
Clermont. As it was, Stevens' Phoenix sailed upon the 
Hudson only a few days later than the Clermont, in 1807, 
but as a result of the monopoly which Livingston and 
Fulton secured from the Legislature in 1808, Stevens was 
crowded out, and in June 1809 he took the Phoenix around 
Cape May to the Delaware upon which she plied many 
years between Philadelphia and Trenton. She is claimed 
to have been the first ocean-going steamboat. 

Contemporaneously with the building of the Clermont 
and of other steamboats after Fulton's models, the inventor 
continued to direct his faculties toward the advancement 
of the science of naval warfare. While the finishing prep- 
arations were being made for the Clermont's maiden 
voyage, namely, on July 20, 1807, Fulton, in pursuance of 
experiments which the United States Government had au- 
thorized him to make, blew up the hulk of a large brig in 
New York harbor with a torpedo. In January, 1810, Ful- 
ton appeared before President Madison, ex-President Jeffer- 
son, and a number of members of Congress, and explained 
to them his plans and models for torpedoes, and a little 
later issued an illustrated pamphlet entitled " Torpedo War- 
fare, or Submr.rin Explosions." 

Livingston, after viewing Fulton's submarine experi- 
ments, said: ' Upon the whole, I view this application of 
powder as one of the most important millitary discoveries 
which some centuries have produced." 

There is no doubt but that the Royal Navy officers who 
witnessed Fulton's demonstrations in 1805 had a wholesome 
respect for his devices, and exercised a corresponding dis- 
cretion in approaching our waters during our second war 
with Great Britain. 

In 1808, Fulton built the Car of Neptune, and in 181 1 
the Paragon, the third of the Fulton-Livingston line of 
Hudson river boats. The Paragon was a great improve- 
ment on her predecessors. She was 173 feet long with 27 
feet breadth of beam. She had a copper boiler 21 feet in 
length, fitted with numerous pipes to facilitate the genera- 



52 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

tion of steam, something after the modern tubular system, 
but owing to some injury to the pipes from fire on the first 
experiment they were abandoned. The Paragon ran many 
years between New York and Albany; but about 1820 she 
ran upon a rock and was abandoned. The round trip from 
New York to Albany and return on the Paragon as on the 
Clermont cost $14. To-day the same trip can be made for 
$3-50. 

In 1 81 2, Fulton started his first ferry-boat. The enter- 
prising' Stevens had started a ferry to Hoboken in October 
the year before, but eventually had to give way to Fulton. 
Of Fulton's boat which ran from Cortlandt street to Jersey 
City, Fulton said : " It crosses the river, which is a mile 
and a half broad, when it is calm, in 15 minutes; the aver- 
age time is 20 minutes. She has had in her at one time 
8 four-wheeler carriages, 29 horses and 100 passengers, and 
could have taken 300 persons more." 

This boat was built on the catamaran principle, consisting 
of two boats, each of 10 feet beam and 80 feet long, sepa- 
rated from each other by an interval of 10 feet, and covered 
with a deck 30 feet wide and 80 long. The paddle-wheel 
was in the space between the boats, protected from ice and 
collision. She was symmetrical at both ends, and, having 
a balanced rudder at each, was not obliged to put about on 
the return trip. Thus we sea that our simple end-wise 
system of receiving and discharging ferry passengers, which 
excited the admiration of some English visitors not long 
ago, dates from the very beginning of steam ferriage. 
Fulton also devised the ferry bridge almost precisely as used 
in its elements to-day. It was attached to the wharf by a 
horizontal hinge, the outer end resting on a float which rose 
and fell with the tide. He p ovided, in addition, an in- 
e^enious bumper with hydraulic counter-weights to receive 
the impact of the arriving boat, which in later years proved 
to be unnecessary. 

Fulton's estimate of the expense of running a steam 
ferry-boat for one year is very moderate compared with 
the expense of a modern ferry : 



Invention of Steam Navigation 53 

2 firemen at 30 dollars a month each, they finding them- 
selves. They will also act as engineers to keep the engine 
in order. They must be engaged for the year, as such men 
.cannot be turned away in the winter and got in the spring — 

60 dollars a month $720 a year 

Two boatmen to take turns at steering at 

25 dollars a month each, 50 dollars a 

month 600 

i^ cords of wood for 12 or 13 hours at 

4^ dollars a day, to work 320 days. . . 2,240 
Ware, tare and repairs ; 600 

Total $4,160 

Robert Fulton 
Jany. 22, 1810. 

The outbreak of the war of 1812 with Great Britain 
naturally turned Fulton's thoughts again to his purpose to 
rid the seas of British oppression. John Bull well knew 
Fulton's ingenuity and constructive ability, and we may 
be sure that he kept a particular eye on Fulton's activities. 
It is possible that the immunity of New York City during 
the war was partly due to the Vv^holesome fear that some 
of Fulton's submarine contrivances might be hidden under 
the waters of New York harbor. In March, 1814, Con- 
gress authorized the construction of the first steam vessel 
of war according to plans submitted to Fulton, and this 
vessel, called the Demologos, or Fulton the First, was 
launched, but not completed, October 29, 1814. She was 
built, like his ferry-boat, on the catamaran principle, and 
consisted of two hulls, 66 feet long, separated by a channel 
15 feet wide. The paddle-wheel was within this central 
channel. She had a parapet 4 feet 10 inches thick; port- 
holes for 30 32-pounder guns; two bowsprits and jibs; two 
masts; and four rudders, one at each end of each hull. 

The launching of this vessel was a great event in New 
York. Multitudes crowded the shores, and the river and 
bay were filled with vessels of war dressed in all their 
colors. In their midst was the enormous floating mass, 
saluted by land batteries, bands of music and the cheers of 



54 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

the people. The enemy had endeavored to prevent the 
building of the frigate by blockading the port and cutting 
off necessary supplies, but he only succeeded in increasing 
the expense. The vessel was completed ; equipped writh 
guns opportunely captured from the British and transported 
over miry roads from Philadelphia to New York; and on 
July 4, 1 815, she made a trip to sea and back, a distance 
of 53 miles, in 8 hours and 20 minutes. But on February 
17th, the treaty of peace with Great Britain was ratified at 
Washington and the war was over. 

Meanwhile, England had evidently sustained a great 
fright, if we may judge from the English newspaper ac- 
counts of the Demologos, which declared her to be 300 feet 
long and 200 feet wide, with sides 13 feet thick, carrying 
44 guns, and able to discharge 100 gallons of boiling water 
a minute. Furthermore, she could brandish 300 cutlasses 
with the utmost regularity over the gunwale, and dart 300 
heavy iron pikes of great length from her sides with great 
force and withdraw them every quarter of a minute ! 
X Fulton, while present at the launching of the Demologos, 
did not live to see her completed, but died Thursday, Feb- 
ruary 23, 181 5, at his home which stood in what is now 
Battery Place, in the rear of No. i Broadway.* In Jan- 
uary, he had caught a severe cold while at Trenton attend- 
ing a hearing before the New Jersey Legislature involving 
the right of John R. Livingston ;to run a ferry-boat between 
New York and New Jersey. Returning from Trenton, he 
found the river full of ice, and he was detained on the 
water several hours on a very severe day. Notwithstand- 
ing the cold he had caught, he was so intensely interested 
in the completion of the frigate that he disregarded the 
proper precautions for his health. He spent many hours in 
inclement weather on the decks of the Demologos, super- 
vising the work, and at last succumbed, the victim of his 
devotion to his great work. 

* The date and place of Fulton's death above given though 
differing from those given by his biographers Colden and Reigant 
are authentic, being based upon obituary notices in contemporary 
newspapers and upon the city directory of that year. 



Invention of Steam Navigation 55 

On the day following, while minute guns boomed from 
the frigate and the West Battery (now the Aquarium,) 
his body was escorted to Trinity Church by all the ofificers 
of (he national and state governments then in the city, by 
the city magistrates and common council, by several socie- 
ties, and by a greater number of citizens than had been 
collected on any similar occasion before. It now rests in 
the Livingston vault on the south side of Trinity Church, 
about four rods northwest of the modest monument and 
tablet erected to his memory by the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers in 1901. 

I 
An Esthnate of Fulton's Genius 

If we could assemble in New York harbor a fleet embrac- 
ing all the steam vessels constructed by Fulton or according 
to his plans, we should have an impressive exhibit of his 
productive powers. First we would see the little diving 
Nautilus (1801) whose name significantly recalls that of 
Jules Verne's creation in " 20 Thousand Leagues Under the 
Sea." Then would come the little boat on the Seine (1803), 
and then the Clermont (1807), Car of Neptune (1808), 
Rariton (1809), New Orleans (1811), Paragon (1812), 
Firefly (1812), Jersey Ferryboat (1812), Camden (1812). 
Washington (1813), York Ferryboat (1813). Richmond 
(1814), Nassau Ferryboat (1814), Fulton (1814), Vesu- 
vius (1814), Demologos (1814), Aetna (1815), Buffalo 
(1815), Mute (1815), Olive Branch (1816), Empress of 
Russia (1816), and Chancellor Livingston (1816). 

But even this exhibit would represent only a part of 
Fulton's genius, which expressed itself in his valuable 
pioneer work with submarine boats, torpedoes, inland canals, 
and in other directions for the promotion of the peace and 
prosperity of mankind. 

Recalling again the thought formerly expressed concern- 
ing the hundreds of centuries of slow advancement in the 
science of navip^ation with sailing craft, we cannot fail to 
be deeply impressed with the immense progress made with 
steam navigation since it was established on a commercial 



56 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

"basis by Fulton 102 years ago. The little Clermont of 
1807, which couki carry 100 persons to Albany in 30 hours 
at $7 a head, has developed into the modern floating palace 
which can carry 5,000 in 9^ hours, at the rate of $1.75 
each. 

The Paulus Hook ferry-boat of 1812, which could cross 
the North River in 20 minutes has grown into the superb 
twin-screw municipal ferry-boat, costing $376,000 to build, 
which can go from South Ferry to Staten Island, a distance 
of five miles, in the same time. It costs $192,908 a year 
on the average to run one of the modern Staten Island 
ferry-boats against Fulton's estimate of $4,160. The salar- 
ies and wages of crews and terminal hands amounted in 
1906 to $93,231 per boat against $1,300 a year estimated by 
Fulton; and the fuel cost $45,156 per boat, against Fulton's 
estimate of $2,240. Two firemen (who also acted as en- 
gineers) and two boatmen (who also acted as pilots) com- 
prised Fulton's running force. Each Staten Island boat has 
three crews of 21 members each, who serve eight hours 
each. A municipal ferry-boat can carry 2,500 passengers 
against Fulton's 400. Although the ferry system across the 
North and East River is now falling into disuse, in conse- 
quence of the building of bridges and tunnels, it has been 
of enormous influence in the development of the city. An 
idea of the extent of the ferry traffic of the city at the 
end of the first century after Fulton's achievement of 1807 
may be gathered from the fact that in 1907, all the ferries 
of New York city carried 216,932,549 passengers, of whom 
126,294,239 crossed the North River, 12,716,300 were car- 
ried by the Municipal Ferries in the harbor, and the balance 
were carried by all other ferries. 

Passing around into the East River to the U. S. Navy 
Yard, opposite the place where Fulton's armed frigate was 
launched, we find more material for thoughtful comparison. 
In the Wallabout Bay, ever memorable for the sufferings of 
the prison ship martyrs which Fulton so graphically illus- 
trated in the Columbiad, lie the powerful successors of the 
Demo logos. In the midst of this ponderous mass of peace- 



Invention of Steam Navigation 57 

conserving machines, we may find the submarine ofif-spring 
of his pkinging Nautikis. And in these craft, we can see 
the highest development of his torpedoes. 

But greater than all, in the opening years of the second 
century of steam navigation, come the Lusitania and the 
Mauretania as if to demonstrate the perfection to which 
the science of Fulton has been carried in one hundred years. 
How impressive is the contrast between the beginnings of 
the two centuries and how diminutive the facsimile of the 
Clermont, 150 feet long, will look this year beside the 790- 
foot Cunarders which have just crossed the ocean in less 
than five days.* 

Looking back over this marvelous conquest of the sea 
during the past 102 years, we need suflfer no compunctions 
of conscience in freely rendering our tribute to the memory 
of Fulton as the father of American steamboating. It is 
true that he did not build the first crude boat propelled by 
steam, and he was indebted to others for many ideas which 
he put into successful practice. But we should remember 
that in the history of invention, as in the history of human 
events generally, no single event stands forth alone and 
unconnected with either preceding or succeeding events. 
All history is a continuous and logical sequence of cause 
and eflfect, and each event is at the same time the fruit of 
past labors and the seed of harvests to come. Galileo, 
popularly regarded as the inventor of the telescope, was in- 
debted to the prior discoveries of a Dutchman. Huygens, the 
inventor of the pendulum clock, was the debtor of Galileo 
who noted the swinging lamp. And in like manner we may 
recall the obligations of Stevenson, the father of the loco- 
motive, to Walt ; Daguerrc, the father of photography, to 
Niepce ; Morse, the father of the telegraph, to Joseph 
Henry (and to Galvani if we wish to trace it back so far) ; 
Bell, the father of the telephone, to several persons ; and 
Marconi, the wizard of wireless telegraphy, to Heinrich 



* On March 2, tqoq, the Mauretania reached Daunt's Rock, 
Queenstown. from New York, having traversed 2,934 miles in 4 
days, 20 hours and 2 minutes. This is the fastest trip on record. 



58 Brief History of Hudson and Fulton 

Herz. In invention, as in other affairs, we feel a natural de- 
sire to give a personification to great movements. Washing- 
Ion, Wellington and William of Orange are national heroes, 
not because their achievements were unaided, but partly 
because they personify the movements in which they were 
leading factors. And so it is with our heroes of invention. 
Fulton was indebted to Franklin, Fitch, Stevens and Living- 
ston, both for the lessons of their successes and the lessons 
of their failures ; but the indisputable fact remains that he 
improved upon their experimento and by his genius and 
personal character was able to devise the means and com- 
mand the influence and resources which established steam 
navigation upon a successful commercial basis. Fulton 
personifies the great historical movement of steam naviga- 
tion, and we are justified in yielding with unreserved grati- 
tude the title of " The Father of American Steamboating " 
to him whose motto was : " The Liberty of the Seas Will 
be the Happiness of the Earth." 



59 
PART III. 

GENERAL PLAN OF CELEBRATION 



The plans for the celebration of the events described in the 
preceding pages have been formulated with a view to the inter- 
national, national, interstate. State and local significance of the 
events to be commemorated. 

The people of Holland, under royal auspices, are building a 
reproduction of the " Half Moon," to be presented to the Com- 
mission manned with -a crew in the costumes of the period of 
Henry Hudson. The reception of this distinguished delegation, 
together, as it is hoped, with ships and official representatives oi 
foreign nations, will mark the international phase of the celebration. 

The national government will be represented by the Federal 
troops, the United States navy, and distinguished civil officers. 

An interstate participation cannot be avoided when two common- 
wealths, like New York and New Jersey, have so much in common 
in their geographical, historical, social and commercial relations; 
and the appointment by Gov. Hughes of fifteen distinguished 
citizens of New Jersey upon the Commission, as well as the in- 
quiries from New Jersey boards of trade and other sources indi- 
cate that such participation is in contemplation. 

The State-wide observance of the events has been provided for 
in the preparations for commemorative exercises in all the univer- 
sities, colleges, schools and learned societies, throughout the State. 

In the Hudson River Valley, every county seat from Newburgh 
northward is preparing actively for one day of local celebration. 

In New York city and the Hudson valley south of Newburgh 
the features of the celebration already in contemplation promise 
to make it unique in character and of lasting educational value. 

The program of the celebration as at present outlined, but sub- 
ject to modification in details, is as follows: 

Religious Service Days. 

(Saturday, September 25, and Sunday, September 26, 1909.) 

The Commission is of the opinion that in arranging for the 
celebration the people should not overlook the Divine guidance 
in the two great events to be commemorated, one of which opened 
up our State to modern civilization and led to the founding of the 
City of New York, and the other of which laid the foundation 
for the vast commerce upon which the prosperity of the City and 
State so largely depends. It has therefore set apart the first two 
days for religious observances by those who are accustomed to 
worship on Saturday and Sunday. 



6o Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

Reception Day. 
(Monday, September 27th.) 

The secular observances will begin on Monday, September 27th, 
with the following features : 

General decoration of public and private dwellings from New 
York to the head of the river. 

Rendezvous of American and foreign vessels at New York. 

Fac-simile of Hudson's " Half Moon " to enter the river, be 
formally received and take her place in line. 

Fac-simile of Fulton's " Clermont " to start from original site 
with appropriate exercises and take position in line. 

Visiting guests to disembark and be officially received. 
Opening of exhibits of paintings, prints, books, models, relics, 
etc., by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum 
of Natural History, the Hispanic Museum, the American Numis- 
matic Society, the New York Public Library, the New York 
Historical Society, the New York Genealogical and Biographical 
Society, the American Geographical Society, Webb's School for 
Shipbuilders, the New York Yacht Club, and similar institutions 
throughout the State. The exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art and the American Museum of Natural History promise to 
be the most remarkable of the kind ever held in this country 
and will probably extend over a period of several months. 

Music festivals in the evening in each of the five boroughs of 
the city. 

On some day or days of this week, there will be a remarkable 
exhibition of flying machines. The New York World, has offered 
a prize of $10,000 for the aeronaut who, with a mechanically pro- 
pelled airship, sails over the course from New York to Albany 
traversed by Fulton's first steamboat in 1807. This competition 
will be conducted by the Aero Club of America, and has been ap- 
proved by the Commission as a part of the official celebration. 

During the week it is planned to have, upon a great float in 
the Hudson river opposite Riverside Park, New York, an Indian 
village, in and around which scenes in the early history of New 
York will be enacted. 

Historical Day. 

(Tuesday, September 28th.) 

On Tuesday, September 28lh, there will be an Historical Parade 
in the City of New York. The procession will be composed of 
floats and moving tableaux representing the principal events in 
the history of the City and State. This parade may be repeated 
in Brooklyn on Friday, October i. 



General Plan of Celebration 6i 

In the evening, the Official Literary Exercises will be held in 
the Metropolitan Opera House, the Great Hall of the City College, 
Carnegie Hall, and the Opera House of the Brooklyn Academy 
of Music, at which orations will be delivered by men of national 
reputation. 

General Commemoration Day. 

(Wednesday, September 29th.) 

Soon after the Commission was formed, a World's Fair at or 
near New York City was suggested. After giving several public 
hearings the subject was referred to the Plan and Scope Com- 
mittee, who, in their preliminary report, expressed the belief that 
the country had been surfeited with such temporary celebrations 
and voiced the hope that the celebration of 1909 would be con- 
ducted on a plan which would leave monumental works of lasting 
benefit to the people. The ideas thus expressed have received un- 
equivocal expressions of approval from the leading newspapers 
of this and other States and have been accepted as the policy of 
the Commission. 

It is proposed therefore that Wednesday, September 29th, be 
devoted to the dedication of parks and memorials along the 
Hudson River, and to General Commemorative Exercises through- 
out the State. It is recommended not only that between now and 
then, the most earnest efforts be made to secure great memorials 
like Inwood Hill Park, but also that the civic pride of various 
communities along the river be invoked to participate in like 
manner by establishing parks, institutions or other public memo- 
rials. The interest of the numerous historical and patriotic so- 
cieties is invited in the erection of monuments and tablets, so 
that the history of the Hudson Valley may be written in stone and 
bronze from the site of old Fort Amsterdam to the site of old 
Fort Orange. The Commission has advices which indicate that 
monuments to William the Silent and Henry Hudson, a tablet to 
the Founders and Patriots of New York and a tablet on Fort 
Tryon will be ready for dedication. 

Wednesday is essentially an educational day, designed to be 
participated in by the universities, colleges, schools, museums and 
learned and patriotic societies throughout the whole State. While 
the commemoration of 1909 must, from geographical considerations, 
largely center around the Hudson River, the glory and the material 
benefits of Hudson's and Fulton's achievements are the heritage 
of the people of the entire State, and the programme for Wednes- 
day affords a practical means for a general observance of the 
occasion from one end of the State to the other. Features of 
this day's observances will be as follows : Commemorative exer- 
cises in Columbia University, New York University, College of 



62 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

City of New York, Cooper Union, University of St. John at Ford- 
ham, Hebrew University, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 
Public Schools, Historical Societies, and all the universities, col- 
leges and institutions of learning throughout the State of New 
York; with free lectures for the people in New York City under 
the auspices of the Board of Education. 

The programme for this day also includes aquatic sports on the 
Hudson River, designed in the first instance for friendly competi- 
tion between the crews of the naval vessels, but which may em- 
brace motor boat races and such other amusements as may seem 
practicable and desirable. The races on this day will be opposite 
Riverside Park, New York, and opposite Yonkers. (See also 
Saturday, October 2.) 

Other features of Wednesday's programme will be : 

A reception to visiting guests at West Point during the day; 
and 

An Official Banquet in honor of distinguished guests in the City 
of New York in the evening. 

Military Parade Day. 
(Thursday, September 30th.) 

On Thursday will occur the military parade, participated in by 
the United States Army, the United States Navy and Marine 
Corps, the National Guard and the Naval Militia. 

Owing to the probable length of this parade, which may con- 
tain as many as 25,000 troops, the great fatigue which would be 
caused to the distinguished reviewing party if required to witness 
a longer procession, and the difficulties in the way of moving with 
precision and promptness a larger body if composed of undrilled 
civilians, it has been deemed advisable to eliminate civic features 
from this parade. 

An evening reception to the official guests at the headquarters 
of the Department of the East on Governor's Island is suggested 
as the closing event of the day if it proves agreeable to the 
authorities. 

Hudson River Day. 

(Friday, October ist.) 

Friday, October ist is devoted to the Naval Parade and inci- 
dental ceremonies. It appears to be practicable for some of our 
naval vessels to proceed as far north as Newburgh Bay. It is 
planned to have as many vessels of the navy, merchant marine, 
excursion boats, and pleasure craft as possible go from New York 



General Plan of Celebration 63 

to Newburgh, taking with them the fac-similes of the " Half 
Moon " and " Clermont." 

In order that the inhabitants of the country on either side of 
the river may see the parade and the reproductions of the historic 
vessels, we recommend that the day be devoted by them to fetes 
champetres along the river-sides from New York to Newburgh. 

As the procession passes up the river, salutes may be fired from 
eligible points. 

The Memorial Arch erected by the Daughters of the Revolution 
at Stony Point Battlefield will probably be dedicated on this day. 

Simultaneously with the advance of the South Hudson Division, 
it is proposed to have a counter-procession from Albany to New- 
burgh, the two divisions meeting and holding appropriate cere- 
monies at Newburgh. Here the " Half Moon " and " Clermont '' 
will join the North Hudson Division. 



Carnival Day. 
(Saturday, October 2d.) 

Saturday, October 2d, is designed for a general Carnival Day 
in New York city. 

The New York division of the Naval Parade will return to its 
starting point. 

In Newburgh bay there will be aquatic sports. 

In all the cities this will be peculiarly the Children's Day, de- 
voted to fetes in public and private parks and play-grounds. 

The celebration will culminate in New York City in the evening 
with a Carnival Parade. This feature, with its moving allegorical 
tableaux participated in by all nationalities represented in the 
City will, it is believed, exceed in beauty and interest the most 
famous carnivals of Europe. The Carnival Parade will probably be 
repeated in Brooklyn on some night in the following week. 

Brilliancy will be added to the general spectacle by the illumina- 
tion of the fleet and public and private buildings and a pyrotechnic 
display. Displays of fireworks at various points, notably on the 
great bridges as in the fetes of the 14th of July in Paris, are in 
contemplation. 

At 9 p. M. it is designed to have a chain of signal fires from 
mountain tops and other eligible points along the whole river, 
lighted simultaneously. An arrangement has been made with the 
Pain Manufacturing Company as official illuminators, by which 
local communities can contract for these fires at reasonable and 
uniform rates. 



64 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

Upper Hudson Week. 

(Beginning Sunday, October 3d.) 

It is planned to devote the week beginning Sunday, October 3d, 
to celebrations in the communities along the Upper Hudson. This 
will be somewhat in the nature of an Old Home Week. The 
events previously outlined will draw many residents of the State 
to the City of New York and will prevent as full a participation 
in local celebrations as might otherwise be possible; whereas, in 
the week following not only will the citizens of the communities 
outside of the Metropolis be at home, but former residents of 
those communities will also be freer to make pilgrimages to their 
old homes, renew old ties and participate in local exercises. Be- 
ginning Sunday, October 3d, such portion of the Lower Hudson 
fleet as can continue the voyage to Troy, together with the North 
Hudson Fleet and the " Half Moon " and " Clermont," will be 
subject to the arrangements of the Upper Hudson Committee of 
the Commission. 

Dutchess County Day. 

(Monday, October 4th.) 

On Monday the naval parade will be at Poughkeepsie, the county 
seat of Dutchess county, and remain there during the Poughkeepsie 
Ceremonies. The erection of a statue of Robert Fulton has been 
suggested as a feature of the Poughkeepsie celebration. 

Ulster County Day. 

(Tuesday, October 5th.) 

On Tuesday, the naval parade will proceed to Kingston, the 
county seat of Ulster county, while similar exercises take place 
there. A statue of Governor Clinton has been proposed as the 
permanent memorial here. 

Greene County Day. 

(Wednesday, October 6th.) 

On Wednesday, October 6, the naval parade will go to Catskill, 
the county seat of Greene count}'. It is proposed that the cere- 
monies here include the dedication of a statue of Rip Van Winkle. 

Columbia County Day. 

(Thursday, October 7th.) 

On Thursday, October 7th, the fleet will continue on to Hudson, 
which is the county seat of Columbia county and is named after 
the great explorer. A statue of Henry Hudson is the appropriate 
memorial proposed at this point. 



General Plan of Celebration 65 

Albany Comity Day. 

(Friday, October 8th.) 

On Friday, the 8th, the flotilla will advance to the Capital of 
the commonwealth, the county seat of Albany county and the 
oldest city in the State. A statue of Peter Schuyler, the first 
mayor of Albany, has been suggested as the permanent memorial 
here. 

Rensselaer County Day. 

(Saturday, October gth.) 

In like manner the naval parade will advance to Troy, the 
county seat of Rensselaer county on Saturday, October pth, and 
form the nucleus of the celebration there. A statue of Van 
Rensselaer, who obtained the first land grant in that section, has 
been suggested as an appropriate monument to be erected here. 



66 

PART IV. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR GENERAL COMMEMORA- 
TIVE EXERCISES AND CHILDREN'S 
FESTIVALS. 



Municipal Authorities and Citizens Generally. 

Municipal authorities are requested to cause flags to be dis- 
played on all public buildings during the secular week beginning 
on Monday, September 27. 

Citizens generally are requested to display flags from their 
houses and office buildings and merchants to decorate their store 
windows with the national colors and the colors of the celebration. 
The latter are orange, white and blue, the colors of Holland under 
which Henry Hudson sailed in 1609. 



Learned and Patriotic Societies. 

On Wednesday, September 29 — or on any other day of that 
week if more convenient — it is recommended that patriotic, his- 
torical and other learned societies hold literary exercises bearing 
on the events commemorated or on the consequences of those 
events. The leading speakers of the community should be invited 
to participate. 

Exhibitions of books, prints, maps, paintings and relics will be 
very interesting. Comparative pictures showing the appearance of 
the locality in 1609 or in 1807 and in 1909 will be instructive. 

Historical societies will naturally consider the historical aspects 
of the events. 

Scientific societies may consider the flora and fauna of Hudson's 
time; Hudson's and Fulton's contributions to the science of navi- 
gation, etc. 

The preservation of local landmarks and the marking of historic 
sites is recommended. 



Educational Institutions. 

All universities, colleges, normal schools, high schools, public 
schools and private schools are requested to observe Wednesday, 
September 29, as General Commemoration Day. Programmes 



Suggestions for General Commemorations 67 

should be arranged comprising two or more of the following general 
features : 

1. Patriotic songs. 

2. Debates. 

3. Essays. 

4. Tableaux. 

5. Exhibitions. 

Songs. 

The following songs are recommended : "America," " Star 
Spangled Banner," " Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," " Keller's 
American Hymn," " Hail Columbia." 

Any good sailor's songs, and songs of England and Holland 
would also be appropriate. 

Songs of other nations, with the display of corresponding flags, 
would typify the State's welcome to the people of all foreign 
countries. 

Debates. 

Debating societies will find material for public debates in both 
Hudson's and Fulton's achievements. The following subjects may 
suggest others : 

"Was Henry Hudson justified or not in sailing to America in 
1609 under his contract with the Dutch East India Company?" 

" Were the Dutch or the English best entitled to the territory 
called New Netherland?" 

" Did the presence of Indians in this State on the whole promote 
or hinder the coming of civilization?" 

" If the British had controlled the Hudson river in the War of 
the Revolution, could the Colonies have won their independence?" 

" Which has conferred the greater benfits on mankind, the 
steamboat or the steam locomotive?" 

" Which has had the greater influence of the prosperity of the 
State, the Hudson river or the Erie canal ? " 

" Which did the most for the advancement of civilization, Henry 
Hudson or Robert Fulton ? " 

Essays and Compositions. 

The discovery of the Hudson river and the invention of steam 
navigation offer a wide range of subjects for essays and compo- 
sitions. A few subjects are suggested as follows: 

"Henry Hudson the Navigator." 

" State of Geographical Knowledge in 1609." 

"The Sea Kings of England and Holland and what they did 
for free navigation." 



68 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

" Instruments used in navigation in Hudson's time." 

" The League of the Iroquois." 

"The River Indians and How they Received Hudson." 

" Legends of the Indians." 

" The settlement of New Netherland." 

" The fur trade of New Netherland." 

" How the beaver influenced the history of New York." 

" Customs of the Dutch settlers." 

" The relation of the Hudson River to the history of the State." 

" Robert Fulton the Inventor." 

" Fulton's Debt to other inventors." 

" Progress in steam navigation in lOO years." 

" Description of an ocean voyage in 1609." 

" The scenery of the Hudson River." 

" Legends of the Hudson River." 

" The rank of the Hudson River with other rivers of the United 
States." 

" The Influence of the Erie Canal on the development of New 
York City and State." 

'' The settlement of " (in the blank space insert 

the name of the town or city in which the writer lives.) This 
subject is especially recommended to stimulate the study of local 
history. 

Tableaux. 

It is difficult to make suggestions for tableaux which will be 
applicable to all parts of the State, to the different conditions 
under which they are to be given and to the varying resources of the 
participants. Tableaux can be given out of doors with natural 
surroundings which cannot be given in doors ; and effects can be 
produced in a theatre or large auditorium which cannot be had in 
a schoolroom. Each community must be guided largely by its 
own history, and each company by its own facilities. 

While the primary object of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration is 
to commemorate the achievements of Hudson and Fulton, it is 
designed also to stimulate the study of the local history of all the 
communities of the State. Therefore, any important or picturesque 
or interesting event in the annals of a town or city may appro- 
priately be represented. 

There are no more picturesque subjects than those relating to 
the Indians. If purely aboriginal life is to be represented, scenes 
may be given representing passages in the Legend of Hiawatha, 
which is supposed to depict the origin of the Iroquois. If there 
is any local Indian legend, it may likewise afford material. Scenes 
in Indian domestic life; the making of pottery; wooden dishes, 
bows and arrows, etc. ; the stringing of wampum ; an Indian meal ; 



Suggestions for General Commemorations 69 

the gathering of corn; the pounding of corn; Indian games, etc., 
are admirable subjects for purely Indian characters. 

Then there is a range of subjects, as wide as the State, dealing 
with the contact between the Indians and the white men. The 
settlers of New York were usually very scrupulous to buy their 
land from the Indians, even if the price paid was small, so that 
from the purchase of Manhattan Island by Peter Minuit in 1626 
to the Big Tree Treaty on the Genesee by which the Senecas parted 
with most of their land, there were innumerable incidents of that 
sort. Then there were a great many councils with the Indians 
like that on Bowling Green, New York; that between Stuyvesant 
and the Indians at Albany (Fort Orange) ; those of Sir William 
Johnson at Johnstown ; those under the Council Tree at Geneva, 
etc. The dealings of the fur traders with the natives are susceptible 
of simple and eflfective representation. Cooper's Leatherstocking 
Tales will suggest several picturesque scenes. Scenes of captivity 
may also be represented, and an incident like Mary Jemison's ar- 
rival in the Genesee country with her Indian babe on her back, 
could be easily and strikingly portrayed. 

Henry Hudson may be represented as signing his contract with 
the directors of the Dutch East India Company; or studing his 
globe and charts in the cabin of the Half Moon ; or debating with 
his unruly crew near Nova Zembla whether he shall return to 
Holland or sail for America ; or welcomed by the friendly Hudson 
River Indians. The famous feast, between Hudson city and Albany, 
when the Indians broke their bows and arrows to show their 
friendship, would make a striking scene. If facilities are available, 
a scene based on Collier's painting of "Hudson's Last Voyage " 
would be affective. 

Any phase of Dutch colonial life would be good. A Dutch 
youth and maiden promenading together or with the youth on his 
knees before his sweetheart, would represent a Dutch courtship. 
The rattle-watch — a darkened stage, with a watchman, going about 
with a lantern and whirling his wooden ratchet — could be easily 
produced. Men bowling at ten pins; or a Dutch school scene; or 
features of domestic life, such as spinning, weaving, threshing 
with a flail, churning by hand, polishing the pewter dishes, and 
cooking at the old fire-place, are good material to work upon. 

What has just been said about the Dutch period is equally applic- 
able to the English colonial period. A tea party of either colonial 
period could be made very pretty. 

In preparing for the presentation of historical scenes, the first 
essential is to read the local history of the town and pick out 
its leading events. Some incident connected with the first per- 
manent settlement of each town is particularly recommended. In 
New York city, the purchase of Manhattan Island in 1626 would 
represent the beginning of the Dutch period; the surrender of 



70 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

Furt Amsterdam by Peter Stuyvesaiit in 1664 the begiimiiiig of the 
English period; and the reading of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence to the Continental Army, July 9, 1776 the beginning of the 
American period. The trial and acquittal of John Peter Zenger 
(1735) establishing the freedom of the press; citizens signing the 
nonimportation agreement (1765), citizens burning the British 
stamps (1765) ; Washington giving instructions to Nathan Hale 
(1776) ; Washington's farwell to his officers (1783) are suggest- 
ive of many others relating to colonial and revolutionary times. 
Where events are of national or state-wide importance there is no 
reason why one community should not borrow subjects from an- 
other. Washington refusing the crown at Newburgh, the adoption 
of the Constitution at Kingston, the Capitulation of Burogyne at 
Saratoga, and the making of the first American flag flown in 
battle at Fort Stanwix (Rome) are events in the latter class. 

Almost every community has had one pre-eminent historical 
character, like Peter Stuyvesant, George Clinton, Peter Schuyler, 
Kilian Van Rensselaer, Horatio Seymour, William H. Seward, or 
scores of others who could me named. Such a character, repre- 
sented in his most famous attitude or act, would make a tableau by 
itself. Often -times a local statute will convey a helpful suggestion 
in this direction. " Living statuary," representing a soldier and 
sailor, would symbolize the civil war. 

Robert Fulton's life suggests several subjects, such as taking 
painting lessons from Benjamin West; working on a steamboat 
model ; making mechanical drawings ; conferring with ex-Presi- 
dent Jefferson, President Madison and others when he explained 
his torpedo plans, etc. 

Irving's Sketch Book can be drawn upon for Legends of the 
Hudson river, foremost among which is that of Rip Van Winkle 
and Henry Hudson's crew in the Catskills. 

These hints could be prolonged until they made a volume ; but 
perhaps enough has been said to suggest how to go to work and 
what subjects are available. The discovery of other appropriate 
subjects must be left to the studious ingenuity of the participants 
themselves. 

Exhibitions. 

School exhibitions may include the following things : 

Pictures of Henry Hudson ; the Half Moon ; Amsterdam ; the 
Dutch people; scenes along the coasts of Norway, Spitzbergen, 
Iceland, Greenland, Hudson Bay, the Maine coast, and the Hudson 
river. 

Indian relics of all kinds. 

Relics of early settlers. 

Pictures of Robert Fulton, early and modern steamboats and 
scenery of the Hudson river. 



Suggestions for General Commemorations 71 

Pictures of the locality in which the exhibition is held, showing 
its early and present appearances in contrast. 

Views relating to the Erie canal. 

Old maps of North America and New York State, with pins used 
as markers to indicates voyages of early explorers. A large globe 
of the earth thus marked would be instructive. 

Children's Fcstiz'als. 

Saturday, October 2d, is the day particularly assigned to the 
children of the State for out-door festivals. 

Places. — These festivals may be held on the rivers, river-sides 
village greens, parks, park lakes, roads, boulevards, avenues, streets 
or parts of streets set aside for occasion, recreation piers, open 
fields, vacant lots, playgrounds, campuses and athletic fields. If 
the weather should be inclement or if for other reason it should 
be advisable to have the festivals under cover, use could be made of 
armories, large halls, recreation centers and roof gardens. 

Form of Festivals. — The festivals themselves may take the form 
of (a) dramatic presentations, with literature and arts portraying 
the heroes, the people, the civilization of 1609, and symbols of 
development — scientific, industrial, social, political, educational. 
Or (b) they may take the character of aquatic or land processions 
or pageants with arches, poles, banners, emblems, coats of arms, 
insignia of all kinds, colors, and streamers, so far as possible to be 
made by the school children as school work. The symbols should 
suggest the sources of the Hudson, the different cities and towns in 
succession blessed by its waters, the various products borne by it 
for distribution to mankind in all parts of the world ; and also the 
various nationalties which in succession have come to share in the 
blessings of the river. And (c) there may be home parties for 
children and young people wiih costumes, plays, games, charades, 
etc., illustrative of different features of the places and events. 

Rejoicing.— Folk dancing of all nations, in succession and 
then in unison as one people, is suggested as a form of rejoicing; 
also historical excursions; tournaments; golf; tennis, and other 
ball games : all games for kindergarten and older children in parks, 
in streets set aside for the purpose, in open fields, and vacant lots 
— wherever individuals or neighborhood committees make it pos- 
sible for children to play. Separate places should be provided for 
the segregation of kindergarten and small children. In com- 
munities near the Hudson river, the participants should, if pos- 
sible, hold their rejoicings on the shores of the river and harbor. 

Co-operation. — Schools, committees and individuals arranging 
children's festivals should secure, if possible, the co-operation of 
departments of education, departments of parks and various other 



72 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

departments of government; institutions, playground associations, 
athletic leagues, clubs, associations, societies, neighborhood leagues 
and committees. An individual, a committee or a society may 
select and improve even a vacant lot as a possible place for some 
form of celebration by children. Each school, institution, club, 
society, or neighborhood committee should provide a building or a 
playground and organize for the children of the school or neigh- 
borhood various forms of entertainment. The improvement of such 
vacant lots may lead eventually to the establishment of permanent 
parks or play-grounds. 

Books. 

Following is a partial bibliography for the aid of the student. 
In some of the books mentioned are more extensive lists : 

Indians. — Morgan's " League of the Iroquois," and Ruttenber's 
"History of the Indian Tribes of the Hudson" (rare) are recom- 
mended with the following more accessible publications of the 
New York State Museum : " History of the New York Iroquois," 
" Aboriginal Occupation of New York," "Aboriginal Chipped Stone 
Implements of New York," " Polished Stone Articles Used by the 
New York Aborigines," " Earthenware of the New York Ab- 
origines," " Wampum and Shell Articles used by the New York 
Indians," "Horn and Bone Implements of the New York In- 
dians," " Metallic Implements of the New York Indians," "Me- 
tallic Ornaments of the New York Indians," etc. 

England and Holland. — Greene's " Short History of England " 
and Motley's " History of The Netherlands " will give the relations 
of the countries prior to and at the time of Hudson's voyages. 
'•• Motley's Dutch Nation," by Wm. Elliot Griffis, D. D., L. H. D., 
condenses into one volume Motley's " Rise of the Dutch Republic " 
and in addition brings the historical narrative down to 1908. 

Early Voyages. — John Fiske's " Discovery of America," chapters 
I and II of his " Old Virginia and Her Neighbors " and his " Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies in America " are fascinating reading concern- 
ing the sea-kings, western discoveries and American colonization. 
Volume IV of Winsor's " Narrative and Critical History of 
America" contains a great fund of information on the subject. 
" Purchas His Pilgrimes " published in 1625 is difficult of access 
but useful to the critical student. For individual pre-Hudson voy- 
ages, the following " Old South Leaflets," published by the Direct- 
ors of the Old South Work, Boston, Mass. and costing five cents 
apiece, are very useful: No. 17, " Verazzano's Voyage;" No. 29, 
"The Discovery of America;" No. 31, "The Voyages to Vinland;" 
No. ^y, "The Voyages of the Cabots;" No. 115, "John Cabot's 
Discovery of North America," and others mentioned in their list 
which is sent on application) to them. 



Suggestions for General Commemorations 73 

Henry Hudson.— John Meredith Read's " Historical Inquiry Con- 
cerning Henry Hudson " is the most exhaustive investigation of his 
life, but is rare. Henry C. Murphy's "Henry Hudson in Holland" 
is also rare. Edgar Mayliew Bacon's "Henry Hudson, his Times 
and his Voyages " is perhaps the most convenient and accessible 
modern book on the subject. 

Discovery of the Hudson River. — Asher's " Henry Hudson the 
Navigator " is an exhaustive and critical account of Hudson's 
voyages with full bibliography, but rare. Purchas' Pilgrims, (rare) 
reprinted in the New York Historical Society Collections, Vol. I, 
gives accounts of all four of Hudson's voyages. B. F. De Costa's 
" Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson " contains a dissertation on 
the discovery of the Hudson but is also rare. John Fiske's " Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies in America " is by far the most readable 
and condensed account of the discovery of the river. Bacon's 
" Henry Hudson," above referred to, is also excellent. Yates & 
Moulton's " History of New York " has a running commentary 
on Hudson's voyage up the river. Old South Leaflet, No. 94, " The 
Discovery of the Hudson River " gives that portion of Juet's diary 
of Hudson's voyage relating to the river. The American Scenic 
and Historic Preservation Societ5r'3 " Eleventh Annual Report," 
(1906) contains Juet's Journal, also a fac-simile of Hudson's 
contract with the Dutch East India Company. 

Settlement of Nezv Netherland. — Chapter VIII of Volume IV of 
Winsor's " Narrative and Critical History of America " is an 
interesting and condensed account of the Dutch in America, with 
sources of information and a valuable bibliography. Fiske's " Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies " should also be consulted. The first volume 
of Gen. James Grant Wilson's " Memorial History of New York '' 
is the most scholarly and detailed account of the discovery and 
colonizationi of New Netherland. Old South Leaflet, No. 69, 
contains the " Description of New Netherland by Adrian Van der 
Donck." 

The Hudson River. — Lossing's " Hudson from the Wilderness to 
the Sea " and Bacon's " Hudson River from Ocean to Source " 
are interesting descriptive and historical work. 

Robert Fulton. — Colden's " Life of Robert Fulton " and Reigart's 
"Life of Robert Fulton " are the fullest biographies of the inventor, 
but the date and place of his death are erroneously stated in both. 
Convenient small books are " Robert Fulton, His Life and its 
Results," (194 pp.), by R. H. Thurston, and "The Story of 
Robert Fulton," (120 pp.), by Peyton F. Miller. 

Steam Navigation. — The fullest work on this subject is Admiral 
Preble's " Chronological History of the Origin and Development of 
Steam Navigation." A brief account is to be found in Old South 



74 Hudson-Fulton Celebration Commission 

Leaflets, No. io8, " The Invention of the Steamboat." A valuable 
short book is " A Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Steam 
Navigation from Authentic Documents" (printed in 1848), by 
Bennet Woodcroft, Professor of Machinery in the University 
College of London and editor of the indexes of British patents. 

Local Histories. — It is not possible in these pages to give titles 
of local histories. These should invariably be consulted, however. 

The librarians of public libraries will almost always make helpful 
suggestions to inquiring students. 



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